


the first problem was putting us in charge of a kingdom

by elliptical, Turq_I



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Chaos Magic, Differently Cursed Blue, Drama and Humor, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Healer Noah Czerny, Lynch Family Dynamics, M/M, Multi, Royalty Gansey, Slight Bastard Adam Parrish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:42:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 42,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24943294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elliptical/pseuds/elliptical, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Turq_I/pseuds/Turq_I
Summary: Ronan Lynch loses control of his magic, which is the catalyst for a lot of shit, because he's the first proven user of chaos magic in... basically ever.Gansey's trying to be a good king despite his fears that there may be no such thing.Adam Parrish works beside him, earning his terrifying reputation through psychic study and occasional gray morality.Blue Sargent can't leave her home or she'll sicken and die, and her wanderlust is driving her to seek less-than-sensible solutions.Noah Czerny knows a lot about healing, but he's not omnipotent, and he's a little tired of being asked to clean up everyone else's messes.Declan Lynch doesn't trust the crown.  He especially doesn't trust the crown with his little brother.Mysteriously, all of this leads to rather a lot of conflict.
Relationships: Noah Czerny/Richard Gansey III/Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish/Blue Sargent, and the individual interpersonal pairings therein
Comments: 17
Kudos: 60
Collections: TRC Big Bang 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is a complete fic written for the 2020 trc big bang!  
> writing by elliptical, art by turq  
> the chapters following the first three will be posted throughout july  
> have some messy dumbasses.

Chaos magic eats the world alive.

That’s what Gansey discovers when he makes the emergency journey to view the blight. It’s a trip that could be taken by any number of advisers, details relayed with the dryness of sandpaper, but this is the first recorded case of a chaos catastrophe in living memory. It’s the first tangible proof that an entire unexplored branch of magic exists, undeniable, irrefutable.

Gansey is the king, so making the trip is his duty; he’s a scholar of the unseen, so making the trip is his need.

The energy’s pathway is the antithesis of traditional magic. Traditional magic is a delicate weaving of surrounding threads, manipulating energy that already exists into new shapes. Chaos magic is...

It’s fields and more fields of crops charred to residue too dark and sticky for traditional ash. It’s flat ground with long spiderwebbing grooves like the raking of a god’s fingernails. It’s dead sheep and cows, a few dozen, torn through and reformed and rent until the bodies are impossible to look at.

Even Gansey, whose feelings about the phenomena edge more toward reverence than terror, can’t keep his eyes on the corpses. Only Adam studies them without flinching, his body a warm and familiar presence at Gansey’s right elbow.

“When word spreads,” Gansey says, “we’ll have a panic about apocalypse on our hands.”

Adam gives this the consideration it deserves: a derisive snort. “Magic is magic. Humanize the apocalypses and everyone relaxes.”

Gansey considers arguing. This is a different type of energy from the child mishaps and accidental fires Adam’s used to putting out. The miasma is awfully similar to dread. But then he thinks that Adam might be right. To Gansey, to any practicing magician, to anyone with a smidgen of psychic power, this is a new threat. To the average non-magic user, how should anyone differentiate between one terrible impossible thing and another?

“Humanize this one for me,” says Gansey.

“His name is Ronan Lynch,” Adam says. He’s still gazing at the bones and blood, but it’s possible he isn’t actually seeing them. “His neighbors say he doesn’t go out much since his father died and his mother took ill. He works his farm alone. There’s an older brother, Declan Lynch, who lives in the city. No one’s had any real problem with Ronan until now.”

“And what do you think caused the ‘now’?”

“You shouldn’t ask me to guess when I don’t know anything. I’ll bring it to Blue.”

“She’ll know,” Gansey agrees.

“Or at least feel more comfortable guessing when she doesn’t know anything,” Adam says wryly.

“You should also ask Ronan Lynch,” Gansey says.

This isn’t an order. It could be misconstrued as one, if the recipient wasn’t Adam, and if Adam wasn’t such a stubborn bastard. But Gansey’s true regal orders always begin with an _I need._ “I need you to ask Ronan Lynch” would be different from this, a friendly suggestion between companions.

Adam sighs. “I know.”

Gansey tilts his head, studying Adam’s face curiously. “That doesn’t excite you?” The prospect excites _him,_ and he’s trying to stay out of the investigation’s way.

“No.”

“Really?” It’s not that Gansey doesn’t believe Adam - just that he likes to understand the reasoning when Adam surprises him. “The first substantiated firsthand account of the workings of chaos magic? You don’t want to be the one to record it?”

“Of course I do,” Adam says. “I would just prefer not to interrogate a terrified magic-using commoner who more than likely expects a slow death.”

Gansey shakes his head slightly, marveling. For anyone else, the camaraderie between Adam and the terrified magic-using commoner would make it easier to develop a bond and tease out information. But Adam won’t play that game.

“You don’t have to make them believe in a slow death every time,” he says. “You could just be kind.”

Adam tears his gaze from the dead livestock and studies Gansey’s face instead. There’s a long, perilous moment in which the tension might tip over into a fight.

But then Adam shrugs one shoulder.

“I don’t do your job for you, Gansey,” he says. “You be kind. I’ll be me.”

-

Ronan’s never believed the stories about the kind of cruelty the crown bestows upon criminals.

What he’s discovering now is that he should have.

He didn’t fight the arrest, either.

He should have.

Ronan does not, as a general rule, have the patience or selflessness for martyrdom. If he did, he’d have gotten himself arrested long before now. But this time was different. This time, the magic tore out of him like a feral thing, and he fell into a dizzied unconsciousness, and when he came to, everything was dead.

It’s a little hard to fight an arrest when you deserve it.

But he should have. They’re torturing him.

There’s a lot of shit he can deal with. His pain tolerance tends to be higher than people expect from the average rural farmer. He’s a fighter, a survivor, vicious and bloody and ruthless like his father taught him to be. He possesses a certain strength of will that some - _most_ \- people deem “asinine.”

He doesn’t think he can deal with this for much longer.

But he has to. He’s going to.

They’ve confined him in a spacious room five floors above the ground. One side of the area is curved since it’s situated inside a tower. The door locks, but Ronan’s not restrained by manacles or shackles. Packed bookshelves line the flat wall, the curved space piled with whimsical objects and puzzles that Ronan’s studiously ignoring, like his keepers don’t want him bored. The mattress is thicker and softer than the one in his brother’s fucking guest room, and he’s pretty sure the king himself has slept on these sheets and pillows. The accommodations border on luxurious.

His magic is missing.

Ronan’s learning a lot, now, about vitality and lack thereof. About where his energy comes from. About how the magic nestles in his marrow.

The thing is that the magic has always been with him, a growling animal tucked under his ribs, a shifting tide of skittering beetles, an ocean of pressure and release. It’s a piece of him that can, in the best of times, flex and move and reach like a well-tuned muscular system.

It also appears to be a vital organ. Ronan knows that because the magic is missing, and everything inside his body is starting to go wrong.

Each passing second leaves him sicker. He has no idea what they’ve done to him or to the room, but he knows that there’s an empty space in his chest that’s fucking with the rhythm of his heart and the pull of his lungs, and he knows that his muscles have been trembling for hours, and he knows that none of the food or water they bring him will do a damn thing about it, and he knows it’s a game.

It’s a game. They’re waiting for him to break down and beg for relief. They’ll use it as leverage to loosen his tongue, pry a lifetime of secrets from his traitorous mouth. They’ll descend on the farm and hurt Matthew and take Opal, and the thought of Opal inside this room just increases his stubborn resolve. He tilts his head toward the tiny open window and inhales fresh air through his mouth. It’s not large enough to fit through, or he might have jumped by now.

The door opens. Ronan turns to survey the newcomer. He’s been analyzing the guards, the way they move, their potential weak points in a physical fight. The fact that he’s important enough for constant guarding is information in itself. Escape is a stupid notion, but fantasies are a more comforting way to occupy his thoughts than focusing on his helplessness.

The new arrival shuts the door softly behind him, watching Ronan just as sharply as Ronan’s watching him. He’s not dressed as a guard. He’s not armored at all, actually, at least as far as Ronan can tell. Plain black shirt, pants, gloves, the tailoring screaming upper class and the style neutral enough to blend in. He’s probably Ronan’s age, judging by the youthful cast to his features, but there’s something inside his eyes that Ronan doesn’t like.

Ronan holds eye contact and says nothing. Like fuck is he going to let this stranger intimidate him.

Said stranger is the one to look away, but it’s more annoyed than discomforted. Rather than moving toward Ronan, he steps sideways and sits gingerly on the edge of the bed.

“Do you know what kind of trouble you’re in?” he asks. His voice is pleasantly neutral.

Ronan’s not a fan of pleasantly neutral conversations.

“No,” he replies, just to be shitty.

The guy’s mouth twitches. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

“No.”

“Did you do it?”

Ronan pauses. “Yeah,” he says.

“Why?”

It is with a godlike effort that Ronan bites back his first retort - _The sheep were getting mouthy_ \- and levels a silent glare instead.

“Did you mean to?”

“Not that I’m not thrilled to talk about this,” Ronan says, “but who the fuck are you?”

“My name’s Adam Parrish. Did you mean to do it?”

Ronan wasn’t asking for his _name._ “Why are you here?”

Parrish cocks his head. “If I answer that, will you answer me?”

“Sure.”

“I’m figuring out what to do with you.”

That’s no more than Ronan really expected. “I didn’t mean to do it,” he says, and turns back to the window. “I’ll do it again, probably.”

“All right. Will you answer my questions about your magic?”

“No.”

“Then I’d prefer not to waste more time here.” He stands and walks to the door. Pauses with his hand on the knob. Without turning back, he says, “Eat something. I don’t have patience for self-destruction.”

Then he’s gone, leaving Ronan alone with the pain, and the sickness, and the thin breath of relief through the open window.

-

Blue wakes to the patter of pebbles against her window.

It’s an old and familiar sound, a relic of her early adolescence. Only one person is ever responsible. He doesn’t have any reason to sneak around these days, though, so she’s cautious as she raises the glass and pokes her head out to peer over the roof.

Sure enough, Adam Parrish peers back at her, his hair mussed from riding and his chin hooked idly on the edge of the slats. He’s balancing on the porch railing below, a stupid endeavor that’s ended in bruises and splinters more than once.

“You could knock,” Blue points out.

“And wake the whole house?”

“You could come back during daylight.”

“No, I couldn’t.”

This piques her curiosity. She leans out to the waist and outstretches a hand. He grabs it with his own gloved hand and uses the leverage to scramble onto the shingles, effective if not the least bit graceful.

“You’re heavy,” she complains as she withdraws and he drops, catlike, into the room.

“I’m not fourteen anymore.”

“I’m not either. We have a _front door.”_

“What do you know about chaos mages?”

She blinks. The impromptu midnight ride makes a little more sense, now, even if his particular choice of entry doesn’t. “No more than Gansey. No more than you.”

“I kinda think that’s horseshit.” His relaxed, common accent is as familiar to her as the pebbles. She’d have no idea that he uses a different voice in public if she hadn’t seen him with his students. “You see things I don’t.”

“I don’t see any chaos mages,” she points out, “on account of never meeting one.”

“You make connections I don’t.”

He’s particularly prideful about his ability to make connections. Blue bites her cheek to hold in a smile. “I want you to know,” she says, “the appeal to my ego is working, but not because you’re being subtle.”

He does smile, not bothering to bite down on it, haloed silver in the moonlight from the window. “I’ve got a problem,” he says, and explains the shape of it.

As Blue listens, she sits down on her bed and tucks her feet under herself. Adam joins her, close enough for her arm to brush against his. Closeness is allowed since his long sleeves shield him. Otherwise, she’d be more cautious. She can’t really control the amplification capabilities inside her, and it’s best not to take him off guard.

“How are you keeping him from tearing the castle apart?” she asks.

At Adam’s arched eyebrow, she adds, “Don’t give me that look. Obviously you _are._ Gansey might give him the benefit of the doubt, but you’re not keeping a human apocalypse under the same roof with the king if you can’t control him.”

“Same way I keep any uncontrolled magician from tearing apart the castle.” Adam shrugs one shoulder. “Warded room. I can’t keep him there indefinitely, though.”

Blue’s stomach does something unpleasant. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“What else am I supposed to do?”

“I don’t care. Not that.”

“It’s not like it’s hurting him,” Adam says, a trace of defensiveness creeping into his voice. “So he can’t touch magic. I don’t like being in a place where I can’t touch magic, and I weather it just fine.”

“He’s not _like_ you.”

“He’s not like you, either. He traveled without a problem.”

“Adam,” she says, “if his magic is on the inside, he’s more like me than you.”

Adam leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. When she looks at his face, she can’t read his expression in the dim light. Probably wouldn’t be able to read his expression in the full brightness of day.

“If you’re going to kill him,” she adds, “have the decency not to do it like this.”

He pinches the bridge of his nose, exhaling sharply. “Shit.”

-

Adam catches Noah by the elbow as he’s setting his breakfast plate, glittering with sticky cinnamon crumbs, into the bin to be washed. They’re the only two in the communal dining area at this hour. The sun hasn’t yet peeked above the horizon, and the sky is barely blue. Still, Adam leans in and keeps his voice low. Most of the time, he’s perceptive enough to realize when unwanted ears are listening, but he doesn’t like to take unnecessary chances.

“I might have done something horrible,” he murmurs, “and I need you to help me fix it.”

Noah knows this body language well enough to be appropriately wary. Adam reads the flash of anxiety like a sentence. “I really hate conversations that start like this.”

It’s not a real protest, though, and they both know it. The thing is that Noah can always be relied upon to fix Adam’s worst fuckups. Which is good, because Adam’s worst fuckups tend to involve potentially lethal consequences.

Adam briefs Noah on the situation as they head for the warded tower, detouring only momentarily so Noah can grab a supply kit. There isn’t a whole lot that needs explaining. Noah’s aware of the presence of the chaos mage, if disinterested in the drama, and Noah knows what Blue looks like sick with magic deprivation. Adam doesn’t need to explain further than, “Blue thinks wards will hit him like they’d hit her.” The shared memory of her fever-ravaged body in Adam’s arms does the rest.

Noah saved Blue then. Granted, he’d also had help.

If they’re lucky, Blue will be wrong, and Adam’s thoughtlessness won’t have consequences.

They aren’t lucky.

There’s an incongruous moment in which Adam thinks that the room is empty, that the wards haven’t worked at all, and Ronan Lynch simply bided his time before escaping. Then his gaze falls on Ronan, curled on the floor between the shadow of the bed and the window.

“Shit,” Adam says.

Noah expounds upon this with a few rarely-used and choice words of his own. He kneels beside Ronan as Adam hops onto the mattress to stay out of the way without sacrificing a vantage point.

Noah swipes his finger along Ronan’s ear and raises it to the light, exposing the same sticky black not-ash that coated the blighted fields.

“Don’t _touch_ it,” Adam hisses. For someone so invested in caution and self-proclaimed cowardice, Noah’s lack of self-preservation instinct is astounding.

As expected, Noah ignores him. Ronan, for his part, doesn’t seem conscious of them at all. There’s a ceaseless shiver running through his body, his breathing rapid and pained.

This is a complication of the kind that Adam despises. Any second now, Noah will ask to move Ronan, and his tone will be schooled and careful and remote, because Noah knows there are times when Adam loathes complication more than cruelty, and Adam hates that he knows that.

To fend off a useless bout of self hatred, Adam says, “Help me get him to the infirmary.”

Noah’s shoulders slump a little, more relief in that tiny gesture than in the loudest of sighs.

Adam grits his teeth and hands the apocalypse back his hurricane.

-

Declan Lynch does not sleep after his brother’s arrest.

There’s too much to do. He does not sleep. He’s very calm as he completes the series of necessary tasks. After being informed of the incident, and after reacting with the correct mixture of shock and bullshit to escape uninterrogated, he rides out to the farm.

He hasn’t been here in years, and he would prefer never to be here again, but he starts earnest conversations with neighbors and promises financial restitution and apologizes and swears up and down that this will never happen again. He presents a compelling case, soothes frightened feathers, and does not let the wildness show in his eyes.

He stops at the Barns, because he must, and he retrieves his mother, because he’s expected to. She’ll sleep forever, but as long as her heart beats, he has to playact the son strung out on hope and faith. It’s an excuse more than anything, though. The official census reports that a Ronan-less Barns is a deserted property, but Declan knows where the lies begin and truth ends. This tiny kingdom has a population of exactly two. Declan needs to make sure they can survive without Ronan there to provide.

By the time he’s situated Aurora in his guest room, rendering it useless for any potential guests, he has been awake for two days.

He plans to close his eyes for a half hour, but the second he tries, all he can imagine is arriving twenty-nine minutes too late to keep Ronan from a bloodless execution. He dresses for a business negotiation and goes to the palace.

He’s not expecting to be seen right away, or really to be seen at all, but it turns out that Ronan’s catastrophe is a big fucking deal.

Adam Parrish politely ushers him into an unused meeting room in one of the outer wings. It’s an understated place, a little dusty, furnished by a small wooden table bordered by four wooden chairs. It doesn’t look like a room in a royal’s dwelling. It also doesn’t look common, with the lack of cloth or decoration or wall hangings. It’s a barren landscape, a forgotten stage set.

A trickle of sweat tickles its way under Declan’s collar, down his back.

“How can I help you, Mr. Lynch?” Parrish asks, still all pleasant politeness, sitting in one of the chairs and folding his hands atop the table.

Declan says, “I want my brother released into my custody.”

Parrish tips his chin up, silently encouraging Declan to continue.

Ronan would play a game of silences and aggressive tension, but Declan can’t afford to. Not now, not about this. “I’ll take responsibility for him. Anything he does, you can charge me instead.”

Parrish’s expression doesn’t change. “You’d take the sentence if he kills somebody?”

“Yes.”

Declan’s an excellent liar, but he needs to keep this interaction as pointed and truthful as possible. He’s never spoken to Adam Parrish, but he’s acutely aware of the man’s existence. A dead-eyed mind reader manipulating possibilities like thread and pulling secrets from shadows that never should have been perceived.

Declan cannot give Adam Parrish any reason to believe he might be hiding things. If Parrish looks, he’ll find them.

“If he’s in the city with you, the family farm will go to ruin.”

There’s a sardonic note to Parrish’s voice. What he’s really saying is that Ronan can’t be left to his own devices in a city full of innocents.

Acid coats Declan’s mouth. “I’ll move back to the farm.”

 _“Will_ you?” Fascinated, lazy, catlike.

Another drip of sweat slides down Declan’s back. “Yes.”

“So, then,” Parrish says, “how long have you known what he is?”

-

Declan doesn’t breathe. Adam reads everything he can with his psychic senses, tucking away a portrait of abject terror mixed with peculiar resignation. When he’s gotten all he’s going to, though, he says, “I’m not having you arrested. There’s no law against not reporting magical capabilities.”

What’s impressive is the way Declan’s tone remains unchanged when he says, “There isn’t _now.”_

“I’m not arresting you for breaking an unjust law when you were a child.”

Declan shuts his eyes, a half-second show of vulnerability, and then his gaze sharpens back to steel. “Are you going to let me bring him home or not?”

“I need more information before I come to a decision.” This is Adam’s go-to line during discussions like these; it helps that it’s always true. “Have you seen him do magic before?”

Declan’s hands are in his lap, but Adam’s psychic senses are focused hard enough on his body’s positioning that it’s easy to note the involuntary twitch of his fingers. “Yes.”

“Is this the first time he’s killed anything?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not above begging,” Declan says, “if that’s what you want. I don’t care that much about my dignity.”

Adam doesn’t doubt that _this,_ at least, is true. “I understand that you’re concerned for your brother’s wellbeing,” he says, trying the Gansey approach and pointedly not mentioning that the concern is justified. “I’m concerned for the wellbeing of the entire population. I need to understand what kind of threat his magic poses. You are the only individual I’m aware of who’s been a third party witness. Help me.”

Declan says, “I’ll tell you everything I know if you guarantee that he lives.”

That’s a hell of a promise to wring from Adam, even if Adam can agree fairly easily. Killing Ronan is not - and hasn’t been - an option on his radar. He’s gotten through life just fine without slaughtering innocent people led astray by magic, and he’s not about to start just because he doesn’t understand this particular power.

Plus, it would upset Gansey.

And Blue.

And Noah.

“I’ll guarantee he lives,” Adam says, careful, “but I won’t guarantee it’ll be with you.”

Declan isn’t mollified by this. Adam doesn’t need psychic intuition to tell him that. The promise leaves far too much potential for a fate worse than death. But Declan must decide that’s all he’s going to get, because he nods and says, “My father had it, too. This magic. That’s what killed him.”

-

Colin Greenmantle takes a luxurious sip of stupidly expensive wine, places the decanter down on the glass table, and twists his wedding band idly around his finger.

“Niall Lynch’s son is another son-of-a-bitch sorcerer,” he says.

Piper doesn’t look up from her book. “Which one?”

“Which what?”

“Which son?”

Greenmantle snorts. “Who gives a shit? It’s good news.”

“It’s useless news,” Piper replies, with all the interest of an adolescent finding out a horrifically old and barely-known relative farted to death.

“You have no imagination.”

“You have no intelligence.”

He seeks something non-glass to throw in her direction and settles for one of the silk-covered pillows on the couch. She reaches up and plucks it out of the air before it can mess up her perfectly layered hairstyle.

“Just wait,” Greenmantle says, as if Piper has ever been known for her patience. “This one’s mine.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> displeasure all around

Ronan spends some time in a hazy twilight, capable of hearing vague snatches of the conversations surrounding him, drifting in and out of slumber too frequently to retain anything. He’s badly ill. It occurs to him, in the hazy half-conscious place his mind floats, that not being awake is probably a mercy.

So he’s not certain exactly how much time passes, but he’d guess closer to “days” than “years.” When he finally regains enough awareness to interact with his environment, he discovers an unfamiliar hand touching his throat.

His own hand flashes, lightning quick, and grasps the person’s wrist. With his magic purring against his ribcage, he doesn’t feel dizzy or disoriented. His eyes open, allowing him to glare at a kid who’s probably Ronan’s own age.

The kid’s hair is light, and his eyes are bright. “Oh!” he says, startled but not, apparently, afraid. “Hey.”

“What the fuck is going on.”

“You’re sleeping off a temporary magic amputation - _temporary!”_ he repeats, as Ronan sits up and throws the covers off of his body. “You’re fine.”

“Give me a better explanation or I’m gonna raze this place to the fucking ground.”

“That seems dramatic.” The kid does back off, though, retreating to a chair at the side of the room. “They made a mistake when they arrested you. What happened - wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“It felt pretty _fucking_ intentional.” The wave of fury is ebbing, though, mostly because being mad at the kid is like being mad at a kitten.

“It wasn’t. Adam’s not like that.”

Ronan doesn’t know how to interpret the loyalty. He can’t reconcile this friendly person with the dead-eyed fuck who came to the cell, so either there’s history he doesn’t know or he has the situation wrong.

“I’m Noah, by the way. I’m your main healer so, uh, don’t kill me. Save the murder for people who suck.”

“Like _Adam,”_ Ronan says.

“Okay, don’t kill Adam either.”

“Give me a reason I shouldn’t.”

Ronan’s trying to be intimidating, but Noah just eyes him with exasperation. “First of all, you _can’t._ He’s too smart to be murdered. Second of all, because he’s the king’s spymaster and you’d cause all kinds of problems. Third of all, because he’s not a person who sucks, and fourth of all because I like him.”

“You expect me to believe the king’s spymaster didn’t know what the fuck he was doing to me?”

“I mean,” Noah says, “you can believe it or not. It won’t stop being the truth.”

“This place is a fucking nightmare.”

“You won’t have to put up with it for much longer. As long as you don’t make good on any of the murder threats, at least.”

Ronan snarls his fingers up in the fitted sheet covering the mattress. “They gonna take me back to that cell?”

“I just spent _so much_ energy fixing you,” Noah complains. _“No,_ they are not going to do that.”

“They gonna kill me?”

“You really like looking for the worst in things, don’t you?”

“So that’s a yes.”

_“Also no._ If that were true, why would I bother helping instead of just letting you die? _Honestly.”_

“Then explain.”

“Your dad - no, brother, I think? - is gonna come get you.”

Ronan’s about to say _hold the fuck up WHAT_ when Adam Parrish knocks on the half-open door. “Good, you’re up. I need a word.”

-

Adam watches Ronan just as carefully as he watched Declan, but Ronan’s thoughts and feelings are even more guarded than his brother’s. It’s like trying to weave through a hedge of jagged thorns to find what lies underneath. In most cases, not worth the hassle; in this one, Adam’s just making sure that Ronan isn’t about to blow the castle to bits.

“You can’t let him do that,” Ronan says.

This is because Adam’s just informed him of Declan’s plan.

“Why not?”

“I told you. I’ll do it again.”

Adam nods, steepling his fingers. He’s sitting beside Ronan’s infirmary bed, close enough to touch him. Ronan, for his part, is lounging against the pillows with the indolent air of a spoiled prince. Aside from the furious glare on his face.

“He told me about your father,” Adam says, and there’s a flash of something through Ronan’s defenses, shock or horror or agitation.

“Declan’s a fucking liar,” Ronan snarls. “He didn’t say anything true.”

“Okay,” Adam agrees. “You tell me about your father, then.”

“No.”

“Then I’ll believe Declan’s account.”

Ronan scoffs. “Believe whatever you want.”

Adam studies Ronan, the carefully careless angle of his posture. From the way he’s sitting, it’s impossible to tell he’s been sick in the first place.

“What do you want, then? If not for Declan to take responsibility?”

There’s another flash of emotion, vague but powerful. It’s not so much a snapshot as an explosion of sunlight behind Ronan’s wall of mental brambles.

Then Ronan lashes out so hard with his mental defenses that Adam feels the sting like an unexpected weapon. He can’t help the reflexive flinch, hopes it passes unnoticed. Blue is the only other person he’s ever met who’s consistently successful at driving him back.

Ronan knows the answer to this question. Many people don’t, right away. They need time to think, process, consider.

Ronan knows exactly what he wants.

He doesn’t want Adam to know what that is.

“It’s really, really hard for me to help you if you won’t meet me halfway,” Adam says.

Ronan grimaces. “Noah said you’re a magician.”

Adam tucks away the apparent fact that Ronan and _Healer Czerny_ are on a first name basis. “A lot of people are magicians.”

“Noah said you’re hot shit.”

Adam doubts this is an exact quote, but his ears warm slightly regardless. “And?”

“If I let you fuck around with it-” Ronan starts, and then clarifies, “my magic -- could you get rid of it?”

The question makes Adam’s stomach clench, though a small part of him appreciates the rationality behind the request. Here, finally, is a behavioral pattern that makes sense. Ronan doesn’t want to go back to his farm and wait to die like his father, like his life is already over.

“I could try to find answers,” Adam says, picking his words carefully to avoid making promises he can’t keep. “Gain a deeper understanding. Help you increase your control. Maybe separate it from you permanently, but that’s a gigantic hypothetical.”

“I need to know how to get _rid_ of it.”

There’s a blade underneath that, an edge belying something other than simple survivalist fear. Adam hears it in Ronan’s voice, but his mind is more barricaded than ever. Declan, maybe? If the magic runs in families - but Adam doesn’t think Declan fits into this incongruous puzzle as another chaos mage.

“Okay,” Adam says. “Then I have some people you should meet.”

Ronan exhales.

“But first,” Adam adds, “you need to talk to your brother.”

-

Declan doesn’t really register how afraid he’s been of Ronan’s death until Ronan is standing in front of him, alive and well and just as shitty as he’s always been.

The relief punches him in the throat, leaving him winded and dangerously close to blinking back tears. He hadn’t steeled himself for this kind of reaction. He’d sort of thought that if he kept operating like this was a simple business negotiation, his emotions would take the hint.

“Here comes the sheep killer,” Ronan says to announce himself, flouncing into the meeting room with enough drama to power a six-act play. He’s accompanied by Parrish, a mild shadow by comparison.

Declan wants to hug Ronan. This is an overpowering and puzzling urge, given that he doesn’t tend to hug anyone except Matthew, and most certainly doesn’t hug _Ronan._

He sits straight and firm in his seat until his impulses stop being a flared warning sign of insanity.

“Are you fit to ride?” he asks instead. It’s his best means of determining whether Ronan’s been tortured when Parrish is listening. “I don’t want to arrange for horses if I’m wasting my time.”

“I’m fine,” Ronan snaps.

“Good.” Declan nods, centering himself. “Good. We’ll go back to my house. You can get a bath. Tomorrow morning, we’ll head to the Barns.”

One step at a time. One step at a time. If he doesn’t stop to think, he won’t be lost.

Parrish glances sharply at Ronan. There are a million searing questions in that gaze, and Declan doesn’t like it one bit.

“I’m not going,” Ronan says.

Declan’s hands tighten on the armrests of the chair. “Excuse me?”

Ronan throws himself into a seat, all sullen petulance. “I’m _not going.”_

Ice shards pierce Declan’s stomach.

“Explain.”

“I’m staying here,” Ronan says, “until they figure out how to fix what’s wrong with me.”

Declan’s knuckles whiten further. “Parrish,” he says, turning his attention to the silent non-presence, “we had a deal.”

“I’m keeping up my end,” Parrish says coolly.

Of course he is. Declan’s a fool. He’s a fool to believe any royals or nobles or magicians or courtiers, and he’s a fool to let his guard down when the stakes are this high. Parrish can’t fuck around inside Declan’s head, so he’s dug his claws into Ronan instead, and here’s Ronan thinking that the manipulation is all his idea.

Declan wants to burn this place to the fucking ground.

“Is he free to go where he wants? When he wants?”

“I’m right here, you giant fucking shithead,” Ronan says.

“Yes,” Parrish says.

Declan nods. Ronan’s not really free, not with Parrish weaving nooses of his free will, but at least the illusion of choice will keep his brother from panicking.

They’re making him a weapon. Ronan’s naive enough to believe in the intentions of nobility, but Declan’s known the score for a long time.

“It’s out of my hands, then,” he says, and rises with a courteous bow in Parrish’s direction while his inner self screams and beats his fists and wraps his fingers around Parrish’s throat. “Come see me when you’re ready for a visit home. The animals will miss you.”

Ronan’s mouth twists slightly. “I’m doing it for them,” he says, and then adds, as if he doesn’t particularly give a shit about the family secrets, “the animals will be happier if I don’t bite it _or_ them in a year.”

-

Gansey tries really, really hard not to be enthralled by Ronan Lynch.

Failing that, he tries really, really hard not to show how desperately enthralled he is by Ronan Lynch.

He has a long history of illustrious, oblivious toe-stepping. The first time he met Blue, twelve years old and accompanying his mother to seek advice from Blue’s family, he said some unintentionally offensive thing that made her dump staining juice down his shirt. He can’t forget the anxious ways Adam edged around him in adolescence, or any of the thoughtless things he said to reinforce that. Even Noah has occasionally called him out, though his rebukes are less a conflict than a wince and a, “Maybe _don’t?”_

It’s partially due to this that he meets Ronan in the dressed-down clothing of an upper class but unimportant academic, offering up his actual self in lieu of the king’s mask. It’s not so much that he’s afraid Ronan will think differently of the king’s guise as that he’s afraid Ronan won’t tell him to fuck off when he toe-steps.

Ronan’s posture, as he circles the library making a study of the shelving, is wary enough that Gansey’s certain he made the right call. There’s something a little feral in him, a little unhinged, and a lot restless. Adam’s posture, meanwhile, politely informs Gansey that Adam’s main concern is for the books and themselves making it out of this situation alive.

It is a testament to how enthralled Gansey is that the safety of the books isn’t high on his priorities list.

Gansey’s been told by Adam and Noah alike that Ronan isn’t much of a talker. They’ve been introduced by Adam, Gansey simply as Gansey, which is his mother’s family name and won’t ring bells to the average commoner. Gansey’s light “Make yourself at home” has been met with the aforementioned wary exploration.

Gansey sits at his desk and quietly takes notes, studying Ronan out of the corner of his eye like he’s trying not to spook a cat.

“You can stop fucking staring at me,” Ronan says without turning toward him.

Gansey startles. “I apologize,” he says, sheepish. “I wasn’t trying to.”

“Not _you,”_ Ronan snaps. “Parrish.”

“I don’t apologize,” Adam says.

Having decided that he’s had enough of the books, or maybe enough of Adam, Ronan stalks to the chair across from Gansey’s desk and arranges himself sideways across the cushions, legs hanging over the armrest. It cannot possibly be comfortable.

Gansey suppresses a grin, remembers he’s not currently the king, and lets the delight shine through his face.

This, more than any of Adam’s standoffish behavior, seems to discomfit Ronan. Instead of doing the Stare Gansey’s heard about, he breaks eye contact and shifts and says, “So what makes you so fucking useful?”

“I’m only as useful as you let me be,” Gansey says. “Could I see your magic?”

Adam makes a quick, abortive hand gesture that could either mean _you’re the KING_ or _the BOOKS._

Ronan says, “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

“Your brother mentioned you can use it on a small scale without issue,” Gansey says, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. This is true; he’s read Declan’s statements. “Do you not feel like that’s possible now?”

“Of course he fucking did,” Ronan says, and laughs, mirthless. “Oh, I bet he couldn’t fucking wait. He’s been wanting to sell me out since I learned to walk.”

“Can you do it?” Gansey presses.

“Oh, yeah, I can fucking do it.” Ronan’s tone edges toward malevolence, enough for Gansey to experience a flash of nervousness over the books.

But all Ronan does is lift his hands. Opalescent shadows bleed from his fingertips and down his palms like ink. It’s hard to look at them. They’re thicker than real shadow, but still translucent, and black, but shimmering, and soundless, but weighted, and slick, but silky. Gansey can’t find a concrete word in the mess of contradictions.

The shadows slide down Ronan’s forearms, coalescing at his bent elbows. Rather than dripping onto the floor like oil, they cling to his skin, the spread of them pausing so Ronan’s biceps remain pale and unmarked.

Gansey nearly jumps over his desk in his haste to get a better look. As he reaches out, curious, the shadows whip out of sight like fog dissolved by wind.

“Don’t be fucking suicidal,” Ronan says, flexing his unmarred and now-normal fingers.

“Does it always kill what it touches?” Gansey asks.

“It chews through fucking everything, man.” Ronan’s fury belies something else, though Gansey’s not sure what. Shame, maybe, or fear. “It turns the goddamn world inside out.”

Gansey presses a thumb to his bottom lip.

Adam’s hand touches his elbow; he’s closed the space between them, silent and watchful as ever. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m just wondering,” Gansey muses, “turning the world inside out... if it could have an effect on Blue’s roots.”

He immediately wishes he hadn’t said anything. Ronan doesn’t know or care what he’s talking about. But Adam’s grip on his arm tightens, less a threat than a need for reassurance, and Gansey doesn’t like the calculating look on his face.

-

This time, Adam interrupts Blue’s latest sewing project by knocking on the front door like a normal human being. It’s also late afternoon instead of the middle of the damn night.

Blue doesn’t sew in the kind of refined way that richer women do, though she could if she put her mind to it. She just doesn’t tolerate activities she doesn’t want to do. So she’s attacking a pile of rags that _used_ to be clothes, amassed from her own wardrobe and women all over the house, and she’s turning the fabric into a shredded curtain monstrosity to drape around her bed.

She can’t be bothered to answer the door herself. Orla gets it - Blue knows this because Orla makes the same dramatic big-city fuss she always does - and then Adam’s knocking on her closed bedroom door with a light staccato rap that’s familiar as his accent and the pebbles.

“I sure hope no fancy courtiers are invading my sacred space,” she says.

Adam nudges the door open and makes himself appropriately humble. “Just me.”

“Oh, well. So long as I’m not solving any problems. I’m too busy to be wise today.”

“Thanks for fitting me into your schedule.” Since she’s taken up half of the floor space with fabric, thread, loose scraps, and the occasional blood-spotted pad from a pricked finger, Adam flops across her mattress.

“Did you kill the chaos mage?”

“No. But you were right.” He doesn’t even have to glance over and see her curved mouth before he says, “Stop being smug.”

Blue is not going to stop being smug. She knows she _should_ \- she should take magic deprivation and its consequences very seriously - but any moment where she’s smarter than Adam is a good one.

“Just think how much more you’d have gotten done if I was there to second-guess every decision,” she says.

It’s a joke, and not even a bitter one. She’s made jokes before. But as she rips another old orange skirt down the seams, Adam’s lack of response grows its own gravity.

Anger, familiar and quick and hot, lights at the base of her throat. She’s about to snap at him when he says, “Maybe you could be.”

“Adam.”

“No, I’m not - I’m not being shitty, I swear,” he says, earnest, and she believes that he means it, which just makes her angrier. She’s become an expert in ignoring the bitter acid in her gut, but every so often, he’ll bring it rushing back. Acid reflux of fury and resentment and hopelessness.

“I’m giving you a choice,” she says, “to shut the hell up before I strangle you.”

“What if his curse negates yours?”

Blue can’t think about it. Won’t let herself think about it. “Did you come all this way just to ask me that?”

“I’d kill him,” Adam says. “If he had to die to make it happen, I’d kill him.”

Blue mangles a stitch. Decides this bit of patchwork doesn’t match her chaotic vision anyway. Tears the thread out with her fingers instead of backtracking.

“You want me to talk you out of it,” she says.

Adam says nothing for long enough that she looks up. From this angle, she can’t discern any facial expressions or body language; all she knows is that his chest is rising and falling rapidly.

“Every time,” she says, and laughs, and feels the hot press of tears behind her eyes, “every time I think you can’t be a bigger bastard, you outdo yourself.”

She gives him room to defend himself, and when he doesn’t, continues, “You ride up like a storybook hero coming to rescue the damsel in the tower so she can blink her pretty eyes and look sad and have a heart of gold and tell you to do the right thing? You ride for hours just to _test_ me? To play this little - this little mind game, see how far gone I really am? Gansey could tell you it’s wrong. Noah could tell you faster. A _toddler_ could tell you it’s wrong. But you come all the way out here on your shining steed so you can throw it in my face? _Fuck_ you, Adam.”

There’s more she could say. More she wants to say. Horrible things that’ll drive him across the doorstep and out of her life forever.

Adam rolls off the bed. He takes the requisite few steps and lets his knees fold beside her. Slumps onto the ground. Takes her face gently, so gently, in his bare hands. Turns her toward him.

Touching her means he’s half-paralyzed by his own magic. His pupils are already too wide for the dim light. She’s seen him lose track of his body before, propelled outward by an awareness too expansive to handle.

“I want you to tell me whether you could live with it,” he says, rough and unpracticed. “God, Blue, I can see a dozen ways to have this conversation so you’ll say yes. Tell me where to stop. If you don’t want me to stop, I won’t. I’m not testing you. I won’t judge the answer.”

She’s hardly breathing. He’s close enough for his own breath to tickle her mouth.

“Blue,” he whispers, “is it worth killing for?”

It’s worth it to him. But this is her curse. Her future. Her dreams. The choice rests in her hands, and she’s tired of sacrificing for principle.

She closes her eyes.

-

“There’s two kids on the farm,” the messenger says.

He’s just returned from a quest to scout the Lynch property for magic. What he found were two distinctly un-magic children. Upon which he left. He’s no murderer.

“Squatters?” Greenmantle asks.

“Dunno. They look like the mom, though.”

“Hm.” Greenmantle pours two glasses of wine. His wife is nowhere to be seen; one must be for the messenger. “Tell me everything.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> plots thicken

The first night that Ronan walks the grounds alone, Declan meets him.

It’s not a pre-ordained meeting. Ronan didn’t have any ill intentions when he left his room and threaded toward the closest door. Something about the stale air in the castle makes breathing difficult. He hasn’t been guarded since leaving the warded room, and it’s as good a time to test the limitations of his freedom as any, and the relief of the fresh air nearly sends him to his knees.

No, this isn’t a spy endeavor. Ronan doesn’t even have a path in mind. But he finds himself walking beneath the spreading branches of a cluster of gnarled trees that were probably here before the castle, and there Declan is.

“This is a bullshit illusion,” Ronan says, because it obviously is.

Declan says, “I pulled some strings.”

To be trespassing in Ronan’s path at this hour, those would need to be magic strings, and Ronan’s a hundred percent certain his brother can’t manage that sort of manipulation. “You’re not real,” Ronan says.

“Well,” Declan says, “at least you’re questioning your eyes. Even if you’re being a dumbass.” As Ronan opens his mouth, he adds, “I’m going back to the Barns. You’re not going to come with me, but you should. I’m not confident Matthew can run things himself. Opal probably can, though.”

Those names would have to come from Declan’s mouth - or the mouth of someone who’s picked through Ronan’s thoughts. If it’s the latter, he’s fucked anyway. Ronan glances between the inky shapes of trunks, trying to determine whether any of the shadows have listening ears. Declan shouldn’t be so fucking careless. But then, Declan doesn’t fucking care.

“Listen,” Declan says, and when he steps forward, a beam of moonlight catches the brittleness in his eyes. “Parrish isn’t a man you can trust.”

“Fuck you. _That’s_ what you came here to tell me? I’m not a moron.”

“You’re not,” Declan says, “but neither is he.”

“I’m only staying for as long as they’re helping me,” Ronan says. “All right? Fucking shit. Like I’d kick around here wasting my life when I can do that somewhere without all the fucking doubletalk.”

Declan considers this. It’s more than Ronan usually says. “Make sure they’re helping you, then. Listen to me, Ronan. Get measurable fucking proof. Don’t trust your feelings. Don’t even trust your memories.”

“Good news,” Ronan says. “Neither of those have _ever_ been reliable.”

“Parrish is-” Declan stops, and closes his eyes, and pulls back into the shadows as though hiding from the light. “He’s not what you think he is.”

“So he’s not a manipulative snake and giant jackass with a superiority complex that could power the sun?”

“Hah.” It’s not a laugh. Not even an attempt at one. “He’s dangerous.”

“I fucking know that. Either give me some goddamn specifics or fuck off. You acting all ominous doesn’t actually scare me.”

“I can’t give you specifics. He’ll pick them out of your head.”

Declan says this so calmly that prickles rise along Ronan’s shoulders. It’s not a dramatic reveal by a storyteller. Just a cold recitation of fact.

“I’m keeping my guard up.”

“How would you know if he’d gotten past?”

Ronan’s pretty sure he’d know if someone was poking around in his skull, but then - would he? The nature of the crime includes a lack of evidence.

Declan’s silent for a long moment, a silhouette against silhouettes. “Parrish didn’t end up at the king’s side by accident or arrangement,” he says, careful. “He wanted power, he got power. He always gets what he wants.”

Ronan wants to sneer, mock, discard the sentiment as village gossip. All Declan’s projection. Like anybody who wants a high society position must manipulate and lie and cheat like Declan does.

“So the grand finale is that I shouldn’t care that Parrish says you sold me out, huh? He’s a filthy fucking liar?”

The magic growls inside Ronan. He pushes it down.

Declan says, “I don’t care what Parrish says. I don’t care what you believe. You’re already gone. I’m telling you to swallow the secrets that don’t belong to you. Do whatever the fuck you want with your own.”

Ronan’s fingers curl into fists.

“I’m going now,” Declan says. “I hope to God you’re smart enough to run once you realize. But I’m not sticking around to see.”

-

In terms of self preservation, Gansey is meant to be coddled and protected and treated like something shatterable. He’s not meant to operate without guards or armor or a magician by his side. He’s not meant to experience anything real, because he’s soft and spoiled and chosen, and somehow these qualities are meant to make a great leader.

But in Adam’s absence, Gansey continues working with Ronan anyway.

He tells himself that it’s because he needs to understand his subjects, that the information he gleans will benefit the kingdom. He tells himself that this will make him realer. He knows, though, in the piece of himself that he won’t acknowledge, that he’s studying the magic because he loves it. It’s selfish.

He and Adam have fought about things like this before. Adam, fairly, snapping that Gansey can’t partake in quaint commoner traditions and break bread at their tables if he’s not willing to look at the poor and sick and unhappy. Gansey trying to open his eyes to the shadowed parts of society that no one wants him to see, lest he try to change things. Adam, tense and unsettled, telling him to stop interfering with Adam’s job. Gansey snapping back, _Which way do you want it, then?_

So studying Ronan won’t help him be a king or enact change or be worth the power he’s been given. And working with him without Adam’s protection is stupid. But Adam himself has sanctioned it, either because he believes Ronan’s more dangerous alone or because he’s doing Gansey a kindness. “He doesn’t need to spend days prowling around left to his own devices,” Adam had said with a scoff. “Do whatever you want.”

They’re on the roof of an unused outbuilding, a servants’ quarters that’s a relic of days when the castle needed more staff. The location isn’t related to any particular lesson. Ronan just said, “Where can I get that’s up high?” and flatly refused to climb any of the towers, so this is the next best thing.

“Don’t fall off,” Gansey warns as Ronan crouches at the edge of the roof.

“Maybe I’ll push _you_ off,” Ronan says.

“What are you looking for?”

“Just wanted to be above the ground, man. Sometimes you want to feel like a bird. There’s not always some deep fucking reason.”

“I have never had this desire in my life.” In fact, Gansey suspects that scooting closer to the edge will instill a dangerous sense of vertigo.

“Well, you’re a fucking boring stick in the mud.” Ronan glances over his shoulder. Pauses, contemplative. “No, you’re not. You gotta have a _thing._ What do you like doing?”

“Reading.”

“Of fucking course.”

“Watching people do magic.”

“That’s just because you’re insane.” All the same, Ronan leaves his roof-edge perch and clambers back to Gansey’s side, which is safely planted in the middle of the expanse. “You really don’t have any? Magic, I mean?”

“Not a single drop. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

“Then why the fucking obsession?”

“Interest in the unknown, I suppose. The desire to quantify different possibilities.” Those are the easy answers, the ones Gansey offers to anyone who asks his scholar self. He considers, and then he adds, “I appear doomed to want things I can’t have.”

Ronan has every reason to scoff at him, pick a fight, push him off the fucking roof. It’s despicable for Gansey to express envy over something that’s killing Ronan. But to Gansey’s surprise, Ronan laughs.

“I have all this shit I don’t want,” Ronan says. “We make one hell of a fucking pair.”

-

Declan arrives at the Barns for the second time since Ronan’s arrest. The place should be saturated with relief. After all, he’d thought it would be his prison, and here he remains free to live a life of choice far from these pastures.

But every step just buries him deeper in a mire of dread.

He can’t shake the thought that all of these lives are a delicately balanced house of cards, and the wobbling base just needs a stiff breeze to collapse.

Opal and Matthew don’t run to greet him, as well they shouldn’t if they know what’s good for them, so the dread festers while he stables his horse, treks down the trail to the farmhouse, and enters the kitchen.

“Declan! Is Ronan outside?” The cheery voice pierces the gloom, casting the dusty interior quaint and idyllic rather than haunted. Matthew barrels down the stairs and hurls himself on Declan. Declan allows it because he’s trembling, and anything that can alleviate that is welcome.

He ruffles Matthew’s hair and steels himself to calm. It’s been a long time since Matthew was an active part of his life, but it’s impossible to ignore how he’s missed him.

“We need to get away from here,” he says. _I can’t do anything about Ronan, but God help me if I can’t keep you whole._ “It’s not safe anymore.”

Matthew laughs, disentangling himself. “Oh, big scary pastures. Are we gonna get eaten by wolves? I’ll make friends with wolves.”

Somehow, Declan doesn’t doubt this. Matthew can make friends with anybody.

In a low voice, he says, “Dad fucked up really bad. He got involved with some bad people, and those people want to see his kids hurt.”

“He’s not my father,” Opal says.

She’s entered the kitchen somewhere between Matthew’s tackle and disentanglement. Instead of sitting or running or shifting from foot to foot like a normal child, she stands statue-like and devours Declan with her enormous black eyes.

“I’m not sure they’ll care enough to make a distinction, kid.” Declan doesn’t dare try to comfort her. Or draw nearer. “Ronan can’t protect you.”

Opal says, “Ronan is dead.”

_“What?”_ Matthew, aghast and perplexed in equal measure.

“No-” Declan starts, but his voice doesn’t sound convincing because he’s not particularly optimistic about Ronan’s circumstances. “He’s just not here.”

“You came here when they took him. You said you would get him back. Now you come here and say we need to leave because of dangerous people.” Opal’s all of eight, but she has the drawn-up posture of a dignified queen before the executioner’s block, only spoiled by the clenching and unclenching of her little fists at her sides. “I am not going.”

“Opal,” Matthew says. _He’s_ not afraid to go to her, but she steps aside and ducks his attempted embrace.

“I don’t like promise breakers,” she says. “I don’t know you. I don’t want you here. Get out of my house.”

“Matthew,” Declan says, “come with me.”

Matthew’s mouth pulls down at the corners. He meets Declan’s gaze over the top of Opal’s head. There’s something older in his eyes than when Declan left home, more mature or worn-down than just the passing years.

“Matthew,” he repeats, strained, “please. Please.”

He can’t do it. He can’t find the right path. He gave his mother back to her family, and he traded enough precognitive answers to sort his priorities and get onto the grounds to deliver Ronan’s warning, but he’s not a magician, and the more unsalvageable things feel, the harder it is to make people believe in the possibility of salvation.

“Is Ronan dead?” Matthew asks.

“No,” Declan says. The effort of holding himself up is too much, so he sinks into a chair. “He’s just staying in the city for a while.”

“Then we should wait for him,” Matthew says.

“Sure.” This is reasonable enough. “But not here. Not with no protection.”

The room dims as a thundercloud rolls across the sun. Except when Declan glances out the window, it’s obvious that the sky remains blue. Not a cloud in sight. The sun’s rays drizzle golden across the lawn, and they touch the window’s glass, and then they’re choked by the strange dimness beyond.

Declan’s head whips around, as though he can do anything.

“I’m protection,” Opal says, her voice clear and assured and not at all the tone of a frightened child, and then the light is gone.

-

Adam returns from Fox Way armed with new insight and a game plan for approaching the Ronan situation. He’s so light with exhilaration that he barely registers each footfall against the ground. Here, then, is a way to attack a problem that he’d been fooled into believing was insurmountable.

He discovers that Ronan is more engaged in his studies with Gansey, that Gansey’s as enraptured as ever, and that the two of them seem to have spun a - friendship, of sorts, between them.

This is a relief; an obliging Ronan will help them develop new theories five times as fast. The relief doesn’t last long, though, because he discovers that Ronan’s newfound enthusiasm only exists for Gansey.

With Adam, he’s more guarded than ever. Physically and mentally.

Adam’s taught magicians before. Mostly commoners from all different backgrounds. He knows that his own book-heavy academic education doesn’t always translate easily. He’s willing to adapt. But he moves the study outside, and he lets Ronan pick a shaded place inside the old grove, and Ronan resists every single attempt he makes at connection.

Adam gives up an hour in and sits against a wide trunk, waiting for Ronan to determine his own pace. He doesn’t actively scry Ronan’s mind. But he does scan through the threads wrapping around the surrounding trees, meditation more than intention. At least until an incongruous data point catches his attention.

He tugs at the thread, follows it backward in time. “Your brother was here.”

Ronan’s found himself a root as thick as a mattress to lay across. Adam senses none of his reaction except a thicker snarling of his mental walls.

“Why did he sell me out?” Ronan asks.

Adam considers the question at length. “What does ‘selling you out’ entail?”

“Don’t play fucking games with me.”

“He was afraid the crown would kill you. His information was more valuable than your death.”

“Is it more valuable than my life?”

“Elaborate.”

“You say I can go whenever I want. If I decide I want out, right now, I can walk out the front gate? You don’t want my life in your hands?”

“Why don’t you tell me what’s actually on your mind?”

“Why don’t you pick the thought out of my head?”

“Ah.” Adam sits up straight. He feels, suddenly, a lot older than he is. Every repetition of this conversation ages him a decade. “The rumor mill remains in full swing, I see.”

“So you don’t read minds?”

“If you paid any attention to the lessons, I could explain it.”

“What did you do to get where you are?”

Adam offers a well-trodden, careful explanation. “Most nobles have a public and private persona. Mine are more segmented than most. I need to be frightening enough to dissuade people from hurting the royal family. I prefer to be less of a bastard in private. Especially with students.”

“So what, you drag magicians in here, scare the piss out of them, then feed them a couple lines of bullshit about power and pretend to have a heart of gold? What a goddamn army you’ve built.”

“I think,” Adam says, “I would have more need for an army if we hadn’t been at peace for over a decade. If you want to go, you can go.”

Ronan’s jaw clenches. He stares at the canopy above him, silent for a minute before he says, “Who’s Blue?”

Adam startles. “Where did that come from?”

“Like I didn’t notice you lost your mind when Gansey connected my magic with her.”

Adam really hadn’t thought Ronan had noticed. It’s a strange detail to hold onto contextlessly. Which brings up questions about how much else Ronan’s observed in his short time here.

“Can you read emotions?” Adam asks. “With your magic?”

“No. It was all over your goddamn face. Give me some answers or I’m walking away.”

“All right.” Adam shifts, tucking his legs more comfortably underneath himself. “She’s the next instructor I’m introducing you to.”

-

Blue knows the second the chaos mage steps onto her land.

The land is not “hers” in terms of ownership, property rights, arbitrary claims laid. The land is just her. Her magic allows a heightened awareness of the other magic surrounding her. She doesn’t always recognize Adam’s entrance, stealthy as he is, moving through the astral plane and leaving nothing disturbed.

But she feels the chaos mage inside her bones when he’s still half a mile away.

The magic is not like Adam’s. Not like Noah’s. Not like hers. It’s not an airy gauze of a billion woven strings holding together past, present, and future. It’s a core of energy so dense it’s become a singularity. Begging to spread outside its confines, radiating, consuming.

Blue finds herself outside the house without remembering the process to exit her room, maneuver the stairs, open the door. None of those details matter, anyway. She’s drawn to him like a moth to flame, like a starving child scenting a home-cooked meal for the first time in years.

If she’s followed by any mothers or aunts or cousins, they make themselves scarce. She meets the travelers at the halfway point between her borders and the house. It’s a well-trod path edged by grasses and the occasional wildflower. It’s blue sky and their horses and Adam, a disappearing act because she’s taught him how, fading into nothing beside the spilled-ink silhouette invading Blue’s pastel brushstrokes.

She wants to touch him. She wants to touch him so badly that it’s a scream trapped in her chest, the most insensible and impulsive desire she’s had in a long time.

But the person who actually grabs her hand is Adam. She’s lost time, again, because somehow her bare hand is outstretched toward Ronan’s arm, and Adam’s managed to dismount and grab her with his gloved hand in the blink of an eye.

“Blue,” he warns.

What he’s not saying, because he won’t tell her secrets in front of his students, is that this isn’t normal behavior. As a general rule, Blue is the most mentally present of any of the women here. It’s not a learned skillset as much as a fact. Blue doesn’t lose time, and she doesn’t act impulsively, and she doesn’t wreak havoc with anyone’s magic.

Sensible. Sensible. Sensible.

Ronan Lynch rides with the relaxed posture of a commoner used to using horses as a necessity rather than a luxury. He pulls the steed back a few feet, clearing space between him and Blue.

It’s hard to see him past his magic. The power isn’t empty void or agitated malevolence, as she’s been warned. It’s more like a wellspring of every color in the light spectrum layered to make the densest paint imaginable. He’s an entirely different medium - charcoal on acrylic, ink on pastels, oil on watercolors.

But Blue _can_ see him, too. A curled-lip portrait of contempt, the anxiety inside him only visible through his white-knuckled grip on the reins and clenched jaw.

“Great,” he says, acid and caustic and corrosive and any other words with teeth. “Not only is she a witch, she’s fucking crazy too.”

There’s a tense moment. It’s tense only because Adam doesn’t yet know how this strange, impulsive Blue-like creature reacts to idiocy.

“Well,” she says finally, more to prove to Adam that she’s conscious than to break the tension, “he’s not boring, at least.”

-

There’s an incongruous moment in which the farmhouse seems to wink out of existence.

The moment cannot be easily explained. It’s not that the house dissolves, or that the sunlight mysteriously shines through an empty field where house once stood. It’s not even that a house-shaped void appears to cause migraines and existential terror.

Instead, the house simply... unexists. Greenmantle’s messenger, sitting behind a tree on a grassy hill, knows that the house is there. But he can’t quite remember what the house looks like even as he’s looking at it. The details are shapeless, or maybe they have too many shapes for the mind to hold at once.

There’s an incongruous moment in which the unexistence spools outward like a mirage, a reflection, an illusion. Whether the phenomenon is blindingly bright or searingly dark is impossible to tell. If anything, it’s somehow both.

There’s an incongruous infinity in which the messenger also fails to exist. This is not a frightening sensation. It’s not a sensation at all. It’s merely as if time has folded him from one moment to the next, neatly scooping out the space in the middle. An awareness of loss remains, different from an accidental nap. But there’s no memory of the loss itself.

The messenger attempts to shake his disoriented thoughts into coherence. He pulls himself to his feet, gripping the bark of the tree, and turns back toward the house.

He discovers Declan Lynch standing ten feet away. Declan Lynch is holding a crossbow. The crossbow is pointed at the messenger’s chest.

Declan Lynch does not appear disoriented.

There’s a girl standing beside him, close enough to hug his leg. She’s a pipsqueak, the top of her golden hair barely level with his waist. Inconsequential, or she should be. Nothing should hold the messenger’s attention except the _fucking crossbow._

The problem is that the girl isn’t hugging Declan Lynch’s leg. Or cowering. Or confused. Or vapid. She’s standing unnaturally still, and her black eyes are fixed unblinking on the messenger, and there’s a sharp-toothed smile frozen on her face. Shadows curl against her neck, too thick for the time of day.

“I told you,” she says. She is not addressing the messenger, but she doesn’t break eye contact as she says it.

“You did,” Declan Lynch says with an incredibly put-upon sigh. The weapon has to be heavy enough for his muscles to ache, but his stance is rock solid. He does not look like a man who can be tricked into exhaustion.

_Spoiled city brat my ass,_ the messenger thinks, and wisely refrains from uttering the sentiment out loud.

“So,” the Lynch boy says. “I have” - he lowers the bow to point at the messenger’s gut instead of his skull - “a few” - he shifts, just slightly, apparently deliberating which places will cause a slow enough bleed to serve his purposes - _“fucking”_ \- he accepts that a crossbow shot at three yards will kill no matter _where_ the bolt lands, and helpfully aims at the messenger’s groin - “questions.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> fox way

Here’s the thing about Fox Way:

It’s not horrible.

It’s not the Barns, because nothing will ever be the Barns except the Barns. But it’s a home-adjacent place that Ronan thinks must be to the women here what the Barns is to him. There’s love sewn into the banisters, walls, rugs. The outdoors bleeds with life and energy and wild, sprawling nature.

Ronan finds himself welcomed inside in ways too busy and enthusiastic and caring to find room to snarl. And then, when there is finally a pause in which he could wound, he finds himself sitting in an unobtrusive corner and closing his eyes and letting the environment wrap around him.

The castle is - it’s not a home. Nothing thrives there except what’s forced to. The only wild thing is the grove of old trees that predate the structure entirely. Everything else is pretty flowers, manicured lawns, skeletal trees clipped into unnatural shapes, thick stone and suffocation and emptiness. Ronan is not real, in the castle.

He’s been suffering, in the castle. But he only realizes this because here, where his lungs can actually draw a full breath, the longing for home hits him in ways he could not have predicted with a thousand years of foresight.

He’d thought that he was putting this wound aside, a bravely marching soldier. It turns out that the castle is an anesthetic. Here, he’s waking up from surgery, and the site of the incision is angrier than expected.

He wants to go home.

He wants Matthew and Opal and his bed and the lowing cows and the sheep and even the goddamn chickens who won’t give him one fucking second of peace if he’s twenty seconds late with their morning feed. He wants routine and fresh air and sunrise and sunset and rain.

He wants to go _home._

When he opens his eyes, he discovers Blue sitting near him. Too far to touch, close enough for conversation. She’s also on the floor, feet tucked under her.

He doesn’t know what to make of her. Parrish hasn’t been forthcoming - _she has a different kind of magic, she’ll explain it better than I will_ \- and Ronan hasn’t exactly conversed with her. There was something off when he first saw her, something hungry and open and destructive and - he doesn’t see it anymore. First impression aside, she’s just a normal girl.

He doesn’t trust that.

He doesn’t trust anyone around Parrish, really, except maybe Gansey and Noah. Doesn’t trust himself. Hates the fucking fact that he can feel more achingly peaceful here than he has in weeks and then wonder whether that’s a carefully crafted manipulation.

“Do you really need to make yourself shorter?” he asks Blue. “If I were you, I’d have a goddamn throne. I’d tower.”

“You don’t have _any_ better material?” She looks annoyed, but not insulted. “Of course not.”

“Hey, I’m adapting to new life circumstances. I’m fragile. You have to be gentle with me.”

“Fragile!” She laughs at that, somewhere between surprise and derision. “You’re a hurricane.”

“Hurricanes can be fragile.”

Blue does not dignify this with a response. She returns to her - meditation, or observation, or whatever the hell she’s doing. She’s not looking at him, really, but it’s the same way Gansey doesn’t look at him. Sharp, keen, assessing without assessing.

Ronan isn’t interested in antagonizing her, not when the dirt between the floorboards feels like the soil at home. He shuts his eyes again. When he opens them, she’s gone.

Parrish is in the room, though, actually. He’s sitting on the threadbare sofa beside one of the women who greeted Ronan, the one whose only left impression thus far has been a breathy voice and cloud of impossibly long blonde hair.

Ronan hadn’t realized Parrish was present. And then he realizes why - Parrish is speaking, low, but in a relaxed common cadence that sounds far more like Blue’s than the clipped consonants in the castle. His voice is unfamiliar like this, adding to the homesickness in a way that feels almost cruel.

Ronan hates him, for a moment. Longer than a moment. Hates him for shifting between masks like Declan, for putting on a commoner’s accent to trick the witches into thinking he’s real, for the fact that every truth he tells is also a carefully calculated lie to serve his ends.

He stands abruptly. Parrish startles, another playact, as if he’s ever startled by anything. Floaty Lady greets Ronan, maybe in an attempt to hold him back, but Ronan’s not about to be tethered anywhere he doesn’t want to be, and so he stomps into the deepening night.

-

Gansey arrives at Fox Way in the same manner he usually does - on a trusty horse, traveling unaccompanied except for Noah, dressed in practical clothes with nothing to signal that he’s the king. He does not have secrets from the women here, but in many ways, they’re a secret part of his own life. Riding out here in all his regal glory would mix his two worlds, royal purple and unapologetic forest green swirling to ugly brown mess.

He’s traveling lighter than he would with a procession. It’s still a heavy trip. Mostly because he’s incapable of bringing fewer than fifteen books.

He’s thinking about how his horse deserves all the treats, peace, and quiet in the world when he looks up to see Ronan storming across the field bordering the house, heading for the stables.

Ronan either hasn’t noticed him or doesn’t care. After exchanging a look with Noah, who turns and heads toward the house to give Ronan space, Gansey trails him to the stalls and dismounts. He clears his throat to avoid startling him.

“How do you fucking stand it?” Ronan asks. His body is angled away from Gansey; he’s found the old gray mare who’s lived here for as long as Gansey can remember, and now he’s petting her nose like he needs to soothe himself.

“You don’t like it here?” Gansey’s surprise overrides his ability to consider his words. He could kick himself. As if all common, magic places are the same. As if Ronan is obligated to worship this open, wild space the same way Gansey does.

“You can’t like playing these games. You’re not-” But Ronan cuts himself off, abrupt. The hand not petting the horse curls around the stall door like an angry fist.

Gansey wants to hear how that sentence ends. He’s trying to be careful, though, now that he’s remembered to. “I’ve never known any of the women here to play games. Well. Orla, maybe, but that’s just her way. Blue can be prickly, but she’s one of the most forthright people I’ve ever met. What-”

“Not _them._ I don’t give a fuck about _them.”_ The way Ronan says it, Gansey thinks it’s an untruth, but he doesn’t press. “Why do you stay in the castle? How do you fucking stand it? You could go anywhere.”

Gansey’s mouth thins, but Ronan’s not looking at him, so it doesn’t matter. “I really couldn’t.”

“You have money, man, you’re smart, you - anything you could want, anywhere you could be, and you choose _that fucking place?”_

Gansey can’t stand it, this pressure, yawning tension. He crosses the space between them. When he raises his hand, it’s a question; Ronan doesn’t shy away, so he lays his palm against the other’s arm.

“What’s going on?” he murmurs. “What’s got you so upset?”

Ronan’s voice, when he replies, is trying so hard for a flat snarl that the crack is like a whip slash. “I want to go home.”

“Okay,” Gansey says. He nods. His own tone is very measured, gentle. There’s not a molecule in his body willing to hold Ronan against his will. “Let’s get you home, then.”

“It’s not that fucking simple.”

“It is. I’ll get you home. I’ll make sure-” But Ronan doesn’t know that Gansey’s the king, doesn’t know his life is cradled in Gansey’s hands, and the thought of telling him makes Gansey ill.

“I’ll get you home,” Gansey repeats instead. “If it’s destruction you’re worried about, we’ll talk to Adam. About how to keep you safe. Maybe ways to continue studying from a distance, or ways to have a willing scholar near you.”

“You?” Ronan asks immediately. “Could it be you?”

Gansey’s breath is too pained, when it leaves him. He knows Ronan hears. “It couldn’t be me.”

“No. Of course not.” Ronan strokes his long fingers down the horse’s nose, and there’s nothing but remote coldness in his face. “Well, I don’t want anyone else.”

Gansey swallows. His heart squeezes in his chest. “Then you don’t have to have anyone else. You can just go home.”

“I can’t.”

“Ronan,” Gansey says, soft and coaxing. He has to be careful, here. He’s telling truths about himself that can’t be unsaid. “Misery will kill you faster than any magic. You’ll be happier and safer living where you want to be than-”

“It’s not about me.”

“Okay. What is it about?”

Ronan is silent for long enough that Gansey wonders whether he means to answer at all. He’s thinking about it, surely - Gansey’s taught himself to read facial expressions, and Ronan isn’t good at guarding his. There’s a struggle in his pinched mouth, a burrowed secret behind his furrowed brow.

“If there are ever any other kids - people like me,” Ronan says, “and they burn out, and I could’ve stopped it by letting you fucks-”

He can’t seem to find an adequate end for that sentence. After a pause, he tries again. “If you figure out how to get rid of my magic, no one else who has the same magic will need to die from it. I’ll do a lot of shit to make that happen.”

Gansey leans his forehead against Ronan’s shoulder. The action feels natural, immutable. So, too, does the sudden warmth as Ronan frees his arm from Gansey’s grip and wraps it hard around Gansey’s waist instead.

“I think,” Gansey says, “we need to go talk to the others.”

-

This is how Blue ends up clearing the house and sitting at the kitchen table with her boys.

Blue does not invoke this house-clearing power often. It’s not quite that she hoists people out with magic. More that a well-placed, very passive aggressive, very sad, “But you _can_ go out,” does the trick every time.

“I don’t know what the hell this is,” Ronan mutters, sullen. “I don’t have anything to fucking talk about.”

“It’s about getting everyone on the same page.” Gansey pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Because I think all parties are withholding information, and I don’t like it.”

Blue doesn’t look at Adam. Adam doesn’t look at her. They’re both so pointedly not exchanging guilty glances that she draws Noah’s attention. He cocks his head, gazing at her across the table, more observant than she gives him credit for.

“Why don’t you start, Gansey?” Adam asks, very polite. He’s slipped back into his nobleman’s voice, like he tends to whenever there’s a potential conflict.

“Ronan is hoping to martyr himself for the future of potential chaos magicians everywhere,” Gansey says. “We could start there.”

Ronan’s expression shifts somewhere between “betrayed” and “indignant cat.” Blue’s getting better at seeing his physical body past the magic. “I am fucking not,” he says.

“Gansey’s dramatic,” Blue says. “What martyr-ish tendencies set him off?”

“‘Set me off,’” Gansey echoes. “I am not ‘set off.’ I am taking action regarding a reasonable concern.”

“Yeah,” Noah says agreeably. Then, turning to Ronan, “So, anyway, what martyr-ish tendencies set him off?”

Gansey and Blue meet eyes and share a mouth twitch that _could_ become a smile.

Ronan’s seated beside Noah, which means he’s in prime position to lightly smack him upside the head. “It’s not fucking martyrdom. Look. Gansey’s acting like I’m being a crazy asshole. I’m not. I’m just saying, I’ve got this thing in me that’s gonna kill me or everyone else, and I don’t think it’s that fucking unreasonable to want it out. If I’m gonna die one way and might not the other, then, phah.”

He snorts, kicking the chair back on two legs and folding his arms behind his head. But Blue can see the magic inside him, more like an agitated swarm of bees than a slow oil slick. _Interesting._

Blue doesn’t look at Adam. She doesn’t say, _Don’t._ She shouldn’t have to. But because he’s Adam, he places his forearms on the table and leans across and says, “You’re willing to take those risks? Experimental risks?”

She can read his mind, not through magic or proximity so much as years of companionship. _We avoid all the lies, the manipulation, and the ethical conundrums if he’s in it, too._

Ronan’s lip curls slightly as he watches Adam. “Yeah.”

“But what you want out of it,” Blue says, “is a containment or removal method that can be applied to other chaos magicians.”

Ronan’s magic reacts to that, too, more wary buzzing. “Yeah.”

“What you want out of it,” she presses, “is that, if you die, your death will give us knowledge we need to protect other chaos magicians. And if we contain the magic without killing you, it’s in a manner that can be replicated with other chaos magicians.”

“Thanks for having fucking listening comprehension,” Ronan says.

“I’m sorry,” Gansey says, making zero attempt to actually sound polite. Blue likes him best like this, exasperated and irritable. “Has the definition of martyrdom changed? Because I would like to point out that you called me dramatic and then _immediately_ began discussing the merits of Ronan’s death.”

“I don’t want to fucking die, man,” Ronan says. Gansey almost looks mollified, in the half-mortified way he always does when caught being offensive. At least until Ronan adds, “I just don’t fucking care if I do.”

Blue can’t let this go farther, not when she knows what’s happening inside Adam’s head. Even as she thinks, _I can’t hurt someone this unhappy,_ she knows he’s weighing the situation and judging it a blessed convenience dropped into their laps.

“Okay,” she says, cutting Gansey off before he can get past his first syllable of argument. “Then Gansey and I are handling any experimental aspects. I’m banning Adam from partaking.”

Ronan laughs, humorless. “You really tell Parrish what to do? You think you’ve ever said a goddamn thing to him that he didn’t plan for?”

Blue doesn’t dignify this with a response. “Adam is not partaking,” she says, “because he has an agenda. And I don’t, anymore.”

-

Adam holds still as a statue.

He keeps his chin up and his eyes focused ahead. His expression doesn’t flicker. It’s not posture that makes him look unguilty, but it does make him look unrepentant, and that’s the best he can hope for when he’s being called out for monstrous behavior.

“Obviously he has an agenda,” Ronan says. He’s directly in Adam’s sight line, but Adam’s focusing on a point above his right shoulder. “You gonna enlighten me about what it is?”

“Breaking my curse,” Blue says simply.

Ronan lets his chair legs drop back to the ground. He’s smiling, now, cruel and truly delighted. It’s impossible to miss even though Adam isn’t looking directly at his face. “You cursed him?”

“No, I’m the one cursed.”

“Eugh.” This, Adam surmises, is more due to the implied feelings than the fact of her curse. “Less fun.”

Gansey, seated to Adam’s right, tries to shoot Adam a Look. Adam ignores it. It’s not until the weight of Noah’s gaze lands on him that a familiar burn creeps up the back of his neck.

“I’m sorry,” Blue says. Adam doesn’t realize she’s addressing him and not the room at large until she adds, “I made a mistake.”

Gansey lays a hand over hers. “What kind of mistake?”

“I should have told you no point blank. I shouldn’t have - I’m sorry, Adam.”

Adam stands up. He’s not really in the room with them. But he’s not on the magical plane either. Whatever tethers him to the earth just happens to have given up, so he can tuck himself somewhere secluded and use the body as a shell.

His voice says, “That’s all right. I’m glad we’re all on the same page. Since I’m banned from participation, I’ll leave you to strategize.”

His feet pivot, and he exits the room.

From behind him, he hears Noah say, “I’ve got him, hold on.” But it’s not until Adam has traversed the living room, hallway, back door, and insect-protected outside area that Noah catches up. Adam’s just starting his journey across the backyard field when Noah grabs his elbow.

Noah’s not a particularly confrontational person. Adam stops walking and turns toward him. All the motions feel a little unreal.

“Where are you going?” Noah asks.

Adam shrugs one shoulder. “Anywhere.”

“How about we sit down instead?”

It’s not like Adam is running. He doesn’t have a destination. It won’t make a difference, so he sits in the grass and allows the dampness to soak into his pants.

Noah takes his hand. “You were thinking about hurting Ronan to help Blue.” It’s not a question, but it also doesn’t sound like an accusation.

“I lost sight of things,” Adam says.

Noah and Gansey have very similar morality. But Noah’s judgment doesn’t make Adam’s skin itch like Gansey’s does. Noah doesn’t say, _You can’t trade one life for another._ He doesn’t say, _You can’t choose who suffers and who doesn’t._ He doesn’t say, _You became part of the court to stop people who do this._ He knows that Adam knows all that.

Instead, Noah says, “It’ll be really hard to help him if we have to count you out.”

“You can do it without me.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. As far as magical control is concerned, I’ll bet on you every time.” Noah’s not flattering or wheedling, here, just factual. “Do you mean it? About losing sight of things?”

Adam digs the fingers of his free hand into the soft earth beside him, needing to feel grounded to something. “I screwed up.”

“Okay.” Noah presses their arms together. “So did Blue, I guess. You feral assholes need to come to me more often. I’ll set you straight.”

A wan smile touches Adam’s mouth. “How does it not drive you crazy?”

“I don’t mind feral assholes when they’re people I like.”

“I mean her curse. How do you not want to do anything-”

Noah tips his head until it rests against Adam’s shoulder, his hair tickling Adam’s ear. “I don’t think I can be who I am without caring about everyone. I’m not good at priorities. When someone’s hurt, all the wounds look the same. All the magic looks the same. It doesn’t really - I don’t really have a choice, in thinking he’s worth just as much as Blue.”

Adam laughs a little, helpless, tipping his head back to look at the sky. “We must seem so awful to you.”

“No,” Noah says. “Sometimes I wish I could be like you.”

-

Blue and Gansey are having an animated discussion about magic across the table, with Ronan’s occasional less-than-helpful input, when Noah and Adam return.

“Adam’s decided he’s going to be less murdery,” Noah says.

Gansey looks slightly alarmed. “Was murder on the table?”

“Only a little,” Adam says, settling back into his seat. “So let’s lay out the ground rules.”

“We make things as safe as possible,” Gansey says. “We research risks and try to have a real idea of the potential consequences. We don’t do anything potentially harmful without Noah there.”

Blue and Adam both nod. Gansey’s desire to take charge can chafe, occasionally, but he’s being reasonable here. None of the guidelines are impossible to comply with.

“You help me figure out how the fuck to fix my own magic in a replicable way,” Ronan says. “So no one-and-done shit with Sargent.”

She’s explained her curse to him, explained the roots snaring her to the earth. She can’t tell how he feels about it, aside from his base reaction of a, “Sucks, man.” It’s good that he isn’t tripping over himself, though. She’d kill him for the pity, especially considering his own curse is about on par with hers.

“All right,” Adam says. His face is clearer, now, after whatever conversation he had with Noah. Blue is relieved.

“Could you bind his magic?” Gansey addresses this to Adam. “Like with-”

“It would be a hell of a risk.”

“I’m not sure about that. Not if you bind it so it’s still connected to him, just unable to be expressed. It’s like throwing a sheet over a birdcage. And besides, your bindings could come off with a smidgen of your blood, so-”

“Gansey, stop,” Adam says. “I’m not doing that unless we can’t find another way.”

“I don’t understand.” Gansey’s frowning. He meets Blue’s eyes, a question in his gaze, but she doesn’t know what’s bothering Adam either.

“What, there’s some torture device too nasty for _Parrish_ to use?” Ronan sneers.

“I’ll look into it, all right?” Adam says, ignoring Ronan. “But I’m not using it as our first option.”

“How about you tell me what the fuck you’re talking about?”

“Sorry,” Gansey says. “It’s - you can bind magic with an object, sometimes. To keep a magician from accessing it. Usually a bracelet or article of clothing. It’s not painful. Adam was very innovative when we were in school together.”

Ronan clenches his jaw. “Do it.”

Adam bristles so immediately that Blue nearly gets up to go calm him down, stroke her hands through his hair. She stays put with some difficulty and intense concentration.

“Either do it or tell me why the fuck you won’t.”

“Because if I did it to Blue, it could kill her,” Adam snaps. “Considering how much of what kills her also seems to kill you, I’m being reserved in my judgment.”

“I thought of that,” Gansey says, “but I’m not sure-”

“If it fucks me up, then you know something new. That’s your whole thing, isn’t it? Learning new shit? Just let Noah fix me.”

“I kind of need to point out here,” Noah interjects, “that I am not _omnipotent.”_

“You’re close enough.”

This doesn’t seem like a discussion that’s going to bear productive fruit, so Blue says, “Let’s just add it to the idea list.”

Ronan scoffs. But he also settles, and Blue watches the magic in him settle too, because every piece of him wants this to be the viable solution.

_What are you hiding, Ronan Lynch?_

-

Declan doesn’t kill the messenger.

It’s not because he’s a pacifist, or benevolent, or a good person. It’s not even because the man is more valuable alive than dead. It’s just the immutable knowledge that Declan is not going to fuck Matthew and Opal up the way that his father fucked him up. He’s everything his father’s made him, and nothing of who he wants to be, but he’s not going to be his father.

He does beat the messenger to a bloody pulp with his fists and leave him to crawl into whatever hole he came from. He makes it very clear that a return to Greenmantle is a death sentence. If Declan doesn’t kill him, Greenmantle will. For the crime of being observed.

He tries to make Opal go inside while he deals with the situation, but she won’t leave. As the messenger limps down the road, she peels off one of Declan’s gloves and pats his bruised knuckles. Declan knows how to throw a punch, and the gloves offer extra stability, but his hand is still swollen. Nothing broken, just sore.

“I should wrap that, probably,” he says. He’s not really paying attention, solely focused on making sure the messenger leaves the property.

“You don’t have to,” Opal says. She sounds much fonder of him now that she’s witnessed him commit atrocious acts of violence. Declan doesn’t want to know what kind of fucking example Ronan’s been setting.

“I need-” But he breaks off, glancing down. The little tingle that made him pause recedes along with the - fucking coat of dark magic she’s fizzled over his skin, because of course she has.

The redness and swelling are gone.

Declan’s not thrilled about being touched by chaos magic, but he doesn’t seem to be murdered. “What the hell, kid?”

Opal ignores this. She bends each of his fingers, experimental, and then she drops his hand. Declan nearly finds the moment heartwarming, at least until she fixes her gaze on the silhouette of the messenger in the distance and says, “I could make him die.”

“Do not do that.”

“You can’t stop me.”

Declan recognizes that challenging tone. It’s exactly the same one Ronan used to adopt when they were kids and he wanted to prove a stubborn point. Ronan’s stubbornness didn’t tend toward the homicidal, though. Usually.

“I can’t,” Declan acknowledges. “But if you start making people die when you don’t have to, Matthew will be upset.”

Opal quietly considers this. “You won’t make us leave?”

“The temper tantrum you threw gave me pause.” Declan doesn’t have words to describe it aside from, perhaps, pants-shittingly terrifying.

She grins. He sighs and ruffles her hair.

“Are you staying?” she asks. She must have decided she likes him, then - it’s a far cry from the magic havoc and fury of earlier.

“No,” Declan says. “I’m going to find the man behind this, and anyone else like him, until this place is safe again.”

“Bring Ronan home.”

Declan can’t stop the pain from pinching the corners of his mouth. “I’ll try, kid. I’ll try.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the gang establishes that murder is bad

“Blue?” Gansey murmurs.

She notes that he’s calling her by her actual name instead of a nickname of the week, which means that he has something serious on the brain. She suspects she knows what. So she’s not surprised when she leads him into the back to sit with her underneath the spreading beech at one end of the field, and he leans against the trunk, and he tips his head back, and he closes his eyes, and he says, “Tell me the mistake.”

Shame burns at the base of her skull. She busies herself pulling stalks of grass one by one.

“Please.”

“You’d have to arrest me. If you _didn’t_ arrest me, you’d have to admit you’re playing favorites. That’s not the kind of ethical drama you want when you haven’t digested your breakfast yet.”

He’s quiet for long enough that she steals a glance at his face. His mouth is pinched.

“If anything happens to Ronan while he’s in my care,” he says, and Blue can tell that he’s trying hard to keep his tone rational rather than judgmental, “that will be my responsibility. Doubly so if it happens because I didn’t see something I should have seen.”

“You aren’t psychic,” she snaps. “No one expects you to see anything.”

She regrets it immediately. This isn’t the person she wants to be, and she hates it when she knows she’s wrong because then she doesn’t have an air of superiority to retreat into.

But she and Gansey have known each other for about as long as she and Adam have known each other. He’s learned when not to escalate. Or maybe he's just too tired to escalate. Every time he comes to Fox Way, there are new lines in his face, like time passes a little more quickly for him than everyone else.

So he just keeps his eyes closed and says, “It’s worse, then. Than it used to be.”

“It’s the same as it’s always been. Same as it’s always gonna be.” She pries up more blades of grass, using force to rip out the roots. Each tiny shift in the earth registers as part of her otherworld awareness. “I’m here. Everyone’s out there. It is what it is.”

“Okay,” Gansey says.

She frowns down at her lap. “It’s just,” she says, and yanks a bundle of grass by the fistful, “that when people I love leave, I have to sit here waiting for them to come back.”

He hums acknowledgement.

“And,” she adds, voice pitching dangerously high, “it gets a little boring walking the same square mile over and over, and it’s a little annoying to hear everyone talk about all the places they’ve been that _aren’t_ one shitty square mile.”

Gansey’s looking at her now, but it’s with concern, not alarm.

“And also,” she continues, “my whole family’s going to age and die or move away and I’ll never see them again and I’ll still be here, waiting for other people to come visit me like I’m trapped in a dungeon, and I’m never going to be a real person, so.”

She sniffles and scrubs at her eyes. When Gansey wraps his arms around her, careful and gentle, she wastes no time in situating herself across his lap and burying her face in his shoulder.

“So I told Adam,” she says, and her voice remains relatively steady despite the wetness of her tears soaking into his shirt, “that if he couldn’t help Ronan be less dangerous, and if his magic could burn mine, that I wouldn’t hate him if - if Ronan got hurt for it.”

Gansey makes a low, wounded noise.

“I knew,” she adds, “that if I said it, then Adam would stop trying so hard to save Ronan because he’d be thinking about me instead. I knew that. I said it anyway.”

She’s not sure what reaction she’s expecting. The only sensible one would be anger. But Gansey’s embrace remains calm and tight, and he doesn’t speak. When he doesn’t know the right thing to say, he’s gotten into the habit of retreating into silence instead of putting his foot in his mouth.

“I don’t know when I started being like this,” she says, and that, now, is a true sob. “I don’t want to be like this. Bitter old witch using local children to - maintain her youth, or health, or whatever - it’s such a _stupid_ caricature and here I am-”

Gansey shushes her, softly, less a command to stop speaking than an affirmation that she doesn’t have to. She curls her grass-stained fingers into the fabric of his shirt and cries.

-

Much later in the afternoon, Gansey finds Adam sitting near the creek. It’s a favorite spot of his. It has been since they were kids. Gansey remembers the image of an adolescent Adam perched on a stone, staring into the water as Persephone taught him to observe a world Gansey will never see.

Adam doesn’t have the distant look of concentration that he gets when he’s actively scrying. He scoots over on the wide, flat rock to let Gansey settle next to him.

“Blue told me you might come talk to me about feelings,” Adam says. “As if I didn’t already know.”

“We don’t have to talk about feelings.”

“All right. What’s the end goal of this conversation? Let’s work backwards.”

“I’m hoping that if I put some thoughts into words, you’ll have much more intelligent thoughts that make my thoughts useful.”

Adam frowns. “Any concrete goals, here? An apology? A promise not to do it again? My resignation?”

“No.”

The twist of Adam’s mouth says he doesn’t believe this, so Gansey adds, “I’m talking to you as my friend, Adam. Not as a king dismantling his political adviser.”

“I prefer to talk to Noah about these things, if that’s all right.”

The guarded politeness is Adam’s own retreat, his way of bracing for a backhand so it won’t take him by surprise. Gansey knows this and wishes he didn’t.

“I think we need to change the system so no one has the amount of power that either of us do,” Gansey says.

“That’s always been the endgame.”

“No,” Gansey says, “I think we need to do it sooner. I think trying to fix the world and _then_ giving up the crown isn’t a viable path.”

“All right.” Gansey can’t read Adam’s face or voice at all. “Let me make sure you’re protected before I resign.”

“I don’t want you to resign. I need you.”

“You don’t need me, Gansey. You just need any loyal son of a bitch with enough precognition to keep you alive.”

“Adam. This isn’t about you or your self-loathing. With all due respect, shut up.”

That startles a laugh out of him. A little of the obscurity fades from his face, and he finally turns his gaze from the water to face Gansey properly. “Tell me what you’re thinking, then, that’s not about me or my self-loathing.”

“You’re one of the most wonderful people I know-”

“Oh, God, that sure sounds like it’s about me-”

“-and you still ended up tempted to make a bad judgment call. The standards are - different, for us. We can both hurt whoever we want to get whatever we want at any given moment. That much power influenced by just one stupid decision - we can’t rely solely on our friends to tell us when we’re wrong. We can’t have faith that we’ll always make the right call. We have to stop being able to make wrong calls that have catastrophic consequences.”

Adam runs a hand through his hair. “I don’t like it. You’re right, but I don’t like it.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It means I don’t want to take the chance that anyone worse than us ends up with the kind of power we have. I feel better if I’m the one in control.” A deep breath. “That’s how I know you’re right.”

“So are you fighting me on this?”

“No. But it’s gonna be real messy before anything gets fixed.”

“That’s okay,” Gansey says. “Let’s make a mess.”

-

Ronan drops a stack of books he can’t be assed to read in front of Noah. They’re meant for dramatic punctuation rather than actual studying.

“Teach me,” he says.

Noah blinks. “I don’t really teach,” he says. “On account of being, uh, terrible at it.”

“Well, Parrish and Sargent are apparently conspiring to axe me in my sleep, and Gansey can’t use magic to save his fucking life.”

“Any one of the women here could teach you,” Noah points out. “They’re all pretty wise. It’s sort of their thing.”

Ronan scoffs.

“What? You think they can’t?” Noah pulls his legs up and sits crosslegged in his chair, giving Ronan a look that’s probably supposed to be wide-eyed innocence. “I’m _surprised_ at you. Just because they’re _common-”_

“I _will_ kill you,” Ronan says.

Noah cackles. “No, but seriously.”

“Persephone is checked the fuck out of this material plane, Calla is way too checked into this material plane, Maura’s got better things to do, Jimi’s a busybody, and you’re out of your fucking mind if you think I’m taking magic advice from _Orla.”_

Noah tilts his head, accepting the fact that Ronan’s been paying attention to the goings-on around here. “So I’m the sad sack left over, huh?”

“Yeah. Process of elimination says you win.” Ronan makes a big show of flopping into a chair at an adjacent side of the table, so he can still see Noah’s face past the stacks of books. “Teach me.”

Noah turns the books so he can read the lettering on the spines. He makes a face. “Theory is not my forte.”

“What is, then?”

“Actual, like, useful content.”

Ronan’s mouth curves into a thin smile. “Then we’re on the same page.”

“I really don’t know where to start.”

“You’re the one who fixed me when I was cut off from my magic, right?”

Noah shrugs one shoulder, slightly discomfited. “It wasn’t me alone. I just did what anyone-”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever, you’re not a hero. What was it like?”

Noah frowns. “You’re gonna have to be more specific.”

“Come on, man,” Ronan says, impatient, “you see, like - wounds and shit. You must be able to tell the difference between injury and illness and whatever the fuck else. So what was wrong with me?”

“Oh.” Noah’s quiet for a long few moments, but more like he’s thinking than like he’s avoiding the question. When he speaks, it’s careful. “Blue gets sick when she leaves her roots. Really, really sick. Not at first - at first it’s just weird - but then it gets worse. Like something festering. We’ve tried a lot of things. Slowly widening the area, weathering the illness, putting a lot of distance between her and the house, using magic to help - but it doesn’t work. She has to be connected to her magic. It’s like that, with you.”

“So she and I are the same.”

“In this one thing, yes.”

“There. See? That’s helpful.” Ronan feels better, being able to understand some of the scheming and theorizing and closed-door muttering everyone else is part of. “So I can’t be separated from it. Fine. That’s fine. It’ll have to be what Gansey was talking about.”

Noah’s frown deepens, like he’s not following or maybe just doesn’t agree. “The binding.”

At Ronan’s nod and arched eyebrow, Noah sighs and says, “Well, worth a shot, I guess.”

-

Adam does what seems most logical when faced with something he doesn’t want to do: He does it, but shuts himself in a linen closet so no one can bother him.

When he and Blue were about fourteen, there was a brief period in which a feral cat living in the stables was introduced to the house. The cat, reasonably, decided it preferred living around horses and open doors to people. In its brief tenure of anxiety-ridden hiding and hissing, it made a nest in the linen closet in which it could avoid everyone for days. Adam can find little to fault in the behavior.

He makes himself a pile of clean pillows and sheets on the ground, then tucks himself under the bottom shelf and closes the door.

Creating magical bindings is an involved process, but it doesn’t expend a lot of energy. It’s more like needing to weave a complex pattern with the knowledge that a missed stitch or off-color thread can sour the entire thing. The whole endeavor is more dangerous than Adam will let Gansey know, which is why he always tests the final product on himself before other people.

So he’ll test this on himself, and then he’ll have Blue touch him to make sure it can withstand her amplification, and then he’ll bring it to Ronan.

He just doesn’t want to.

The bracelet is made of stretchy fabric material that can slip easily on and off. It’s far too flimsy for any real use, but it’ll work for finding out whether this is even a viable avenue. Adam slips it over his wrist and leans his head back against the wall.

Panic sets in immediately, a mental clamor like he’s been left to suffocate. He breathes around it. It’s a similar sort of effect to the warding rooms, pulling a blanket down over his psychic awareness, but he can walk in and out of the rooms without a problem. This enchantment stretches and wraps around his body like a fist. The fact that he can pull the bracelet off does not make him feel better, because logic doesn’t tend to work with irrational fear.

He has to get his heart to stop hammering so that he can test whether there are cracks, errors, misalignments. He has to stay grounded in the present moment and above all else, make sure he doesn’t start thinking about anything that’s not helpful to think about.

Before he can do that, though, the door opens.

Adam blinks in the sudden light and shifts just enough to see who it is. Blue will be unbearable, if she’s here to grab extra fabric for a project, or Gansey politely running an errand, or Jimi who’ll intuit his panic and offer pitying consolation, or God forbid _Ronan_ -

But it’s Persephone.

Adam can no more get Persephone to do what he wants than anyone could get the feral cat to socialize with humans, so he doesn’t argue when she enters the closet, closes the door, and wedges herself in beside him. Even though they’re both fairly good at slotting into tiny spaces, there’s really not enough room here for two grown humans. Her elbow is jabbing into his ribs.

She slips the bracelet off his wrist, which he only notices she’s doing when his psychic awareness slams back into place. “I’ve _got it,”_ he starts, annoyed, as if anyone’s ever won an argument with Persephone. She just pats his hand.

After a moment, she says, “It works,” and he snatches the loop of fabric off of her wrist.

“I could have screwed up,” he says.

He can’t see her expression in the darkness, but he can picture the placidity perfectly as she says, “You didn’t.”

“I _could have.”_

Persephone hums.

“Great,” Adam says, “it works, thanks, that takes care of that.”

But he doesn’t move, and neither does she. Persephone generally has a purpose to her actions, even if it’s incomprehensible to the outside viewer. Including stuffing herself into a dark linen closet with a neurotic former pupil.

There’s silence for a minute or so. Eventually, Persephone says, “It’s easy to get stuck in time. Reliving the same moments over and over.”

Adam’s fist closes around the fabric of the bracelet.

“They loop,” she says. “The moments. It’s easy to get lost.”

She’s chastising him, but gently, in the manner of a teacher disappointed by a pupil rather than an angry parent. Because he’s smart enough not to make mistakes. Because he’s learned to lean on outside resources rather than his own self. Because shutting himself away to do dangerous things is a great way to get killed, and he knows it.

“What if I was a better person back then than I am now?”

“Were you?”

Adam shrugs. “I don’t know,” he says, as if that’s ever been an acceptable answer to anything.

Persephone touches his knuckles, light and quick. He uncurls his fingers.

“If I can’t trust myself, I can’t trust anything.”

“Well,” she says, and he hears the slight smile in her voice, “that sounds like your first problem.”

-

Greenmantle can’t be killed.

Not because of magic, at least not directly. There’s nothing as simple as an immortality charm or single protection spell. Something like that would be too easy to break, with enough money paid to a skilled magician.

But the man is good at laying traps, and he’s created too many dangerous connections. The man’s magic is good for anticipation. He’s one step ahead of everyone, threading contingencies and threats and impending collapses through his own lifeline. He can’t be killed without damning the killer and everything the killer cares about.

Declan sets the fantasy of murder aside since it’s unviable. He sets his sights on lesser goals. Namely, getting Greenmantle to leave his fucking family alone.

Which means he has to find out exactly what Greenmantle wants, and then - find a way to give it to him, probably. Depending on the level of impossibility, appeasing the man is likely easier than intimidating him into acquiescence.

Declan places money in a few well-chosen pockets, which garners him enough information to get his hands on Greenmantle’s notes. It’s the same principle that gained him access to the castle grounds in the dead of night when his brother happened to be alone.

He discovers that he’s made a mistake.

It’s one of those Mistakes, capital M, that a person remembers for the rest of their life. The kind of mistake that undoes a thousand perfect decisions prior.

He doesn’t bother to replace the notebook to hide his theft before he runs.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ronan's magic is dramatic

The nature of Ronan’s magic is such that it’s difficult to get concrete answers without taking risks. The varying participants in the discussion can go back and forth, spending nights developing theories and ideas and ancient textual evidence, but they won’t have answers until they experiment, and Ronan is impatient to get home.

So they make things as safe as they can. Which is to say, they situate themselves in the open field of the backyard to minimize the number of trees and houses at the epicenter of a potential hurricane. The women of the house stay inside, watching through the windows for potential signs of calamity, aside from Blue.

Blue sits near Ronan, close enough to lean and touch but too far to accidentally brush him. She’s as aware of his magic as ever, the way it’s an anxious swarm thrumming in time with his own anxiety. There’s also Noah, to help if something goes wrong; Gansey, to help if nothing does; Adam, to assess the situation and determine the safest possibilities.

“All right,” Ronan says. He’s decided to lay on his back, staring up at the sky like an unconcerned farmhand. Blue can tell it’s an act, but she’s not sure she’d be able to without seeing his magic. Keeping with said act, he waves a hand through the air. “Give it to me.”

Adam snorts, more distaste than amusement, but he’s anxious too. That, Blue knows by the set of his shoulders and the tension in his jaw. But he tosses his stretchy fabric bracelet to Ronan like he, too, is determined to playact unconcern. It lands on Ronan’s chest.

Blue should be annoyed, except that she’s fighting her own misgivings, and she’s trying equally hard not to let them show. It’s not that she’s afraid of Ronan getting hurt, really. She understands his magic well enough to be fairly confident this will work. It’s just that she knows how unbelievably unpleasant this type of magic can be when it doesn’t work.

Ronan slides the bracelet onto his wrist without any great fanfare. There’s a breath-held moment as he flexes his fingers. “I don’t feel any different,” he says.

And Blue can’t see anything different. No change in the shape of his magic or its attachment to him.

At Adam’s questioning look, she says, “He looks fine to me.”

Adam’s gasp of relief is barely swallowed by the ruffle of a breeze through the grass. It’s sharp enough for Gansey to reach a hand toward him, and for Ronan to say, “Wow. You _do_ care,” nothing but shitty ire in his tone.

“Try to use your magic,” Gansey urges Ronan, letting his hand drop without touching Adam. “To touch the grass.”

Blue sees the magic agitate, pooling darker on the surface of Ronan’s skin, but it doesn’t move past the protective barrier of the binding.

Ronan pushes himself onto his elbows and then sits up fully. “I can’t,” he says, and instead of fear or irritation, there’s something new: _wonder._ “I can’t do shit.”

“Don’t get too excited,” Adam says. “We still have to test the strength. Blue?”

Three pairs of anxious eyes flick to her. The only one not watching her is Ronan, who’s returned his gaze to the sky like he couldn’t care less about the way the rest of this unfolds. Blue is the wildcard, here, because her initial reaction to Ronan means that she might lose her mind when she touches him.

“I am not going to eat him,” she says. “I’m feeling very sensible right now.”

“Well, thank fuck we’ve established that.” The usual bite is gone from Ronan’s voice. He stretches an arm in her direction without making an effort to scoot closer. “Feast, or whatever.”

This is an exercise she’s done with all of Adam’s students at some point or another. Usually without binding magic involved, but the principle is the same. Amplifying their potential helps when looking for insight, and touch is also the best way to ease the ache inside her. Her best nights have been spent curled in her mother’s arms or holding onto Adam, but it’s sometimes hard for people to come back from prolonged exposure, so those nights are sparing.

When she touches Adam as he’s cut off from magic, nothing happens. In theory, Ronan’s magic shouldn’t feel her through the enchantment.

She reaches out and clasps his hand, and something shifts.

“Oh-”

-

Ronan feels something go wrong.

It’s not fear, or even pain. For the first second or two, it’s just a blank awareness. It’s how he imagines people must feel right before unexpected oblivion. _Oh,_ he thinks, too nonplussed to muster terror or regret or confusion. _I’m dead._

But the seconds march forward without the smothering of death, which means Ronan has to scramble for a way to express to the others how fucking wrong things are. There’s still no fear. He’s not feeling much of anything, actually. His ears are ringing.

Noah’s voice says, sharper than Ronan’s ever heard, “Let go.”

Noah must be able to see it, then. That’s good. Ronan doesn’t even know what ‘it’ is, beyond the certainty of death. The warm pressure of Blue’s hand leaves his, and his arm drops, but nothing changes.

“Fuck,” Ronan says. “I-”

He doesn’t know how he means to finish that sentence. He drags his hand across his face like that’ll alleviate the pressure, and his skin ends up smeared with black. He stares at it, perplexed, and then coughs despite not feeling sick, and tacky bitterness floods his mouth.

“Take it off,” Noah says. “Take it off _now.”_

Someone’s hand touches his arm, wrestling with the bracelet. He can’t tell whose. It doesn’t seem relevant. He does know Blue stops them, but mostly because he hears her say, “You _can’t,_ it isn’t _safe.”_

Ronan thinks, _She’s decided she wants me dead after all,_ and finds himself surprised by the sense of betrayal. He should know better, but apparently he’s trusted her enough for the act to shock him.

Then he realizes: she’s an amplifier. Of course it isn’t fucking safe. This wrongness is his magic bubbling up inside him, trying to answer her call. If it’s set loose, it’s going to do a lot worse than blighting a couple pastures and the livestock therein. Ronan doesn’t know how much worse it can get.

“Don’t,” he says, or maybe just mouths, since he can’t get a full breath, “be stupid.”

“Adam,” Gansey says. “Adam, I need you to find an answer, and do it _now.”_

“I’m _trying,”_ Parrish snarls. _“Fuck.”_

“I can’t fix this!” Noah shouts. “I keep telling you guys I can’t fix everything and you don’t _believe_ me until-”

“Noah,” Gansey says tersely, “I love you. Shut up. Blue, can you channel it?”

“I don’t know if I’m _powerful_ enough-”

“If it’s a question of power, then I’m certain you’re well-equipped.” Gansey says it like he knows, like he’s tapped into his own school of magic where he can make things true just by believing in them. Ronan tries to tell him that all the happiness and positivity and belief in the world won’t make any difference against this thing inside him, this thing he’s becoming, but he just coughs another spatter of black sludge onto the ground.

The logical solution, for everyone involved, is to kill him now. It’s kindest for Ronan because it saves him from a death of indeterminable length at his magic’s hands. It’s most sensible for everyone else because it keeps him from turning God knows how much of the surrounding land into a smoking crater.

Ronan waits for Parrish to say this.

“Okay,” Parrish says. “Blue, take his hand. Gansey, anchor her. Noah, stay where you are. Do _not_ touch him until I tell you to.”

Ronan’s fully blinded, now, unable to see past the black obscuring his vision. But he knows it’s Parrish’s hand on his arm because his voice sounds, closer than before. “I’m sorry. I should have seen this.”

The bracelet slips off, and Ronan’s back arches as he drags in a full breath.

-

Even as Adam’s maneuvering people into position and skimming through possibilities and probabilities faster than the speed of sound, his mind offers the wry, bitter thought: _At least we’ve_ learned _something._

Ronan’s magic _is_ like Blue’s. It’s just an inside-out version. Even though the power is stored inside him, it still needs an unbroken conduit to the world around him. It’ll kill Ronan in its determination to get out. This is just an accelerated process of something that would almost certainly happen if he kept his magic bound at normal levels.

Touching Blue might open Adam’s awareness to possibilities he’s missing now, but he doesn’t have time; freeing Ronan is the top priority. And it’s dangerous for Adam to touch her when she’s channeling other magic. Especially magic like this. Gansey’s a better anchor, given that he has no psychic intuition to corrupt.

When he slips the bracelet off, the gasp of Ronan’s breath tells him that the mistake is survivable. As long as the magic doesn’t fucking kill them all.

The contact with Ronan’s skin does not dissolve Adam into a million pieces, so the channel is working. The fine tremor running through Blue’s body means it’s not _easy._ She’s threading his energy through the space around them, but there’s no telling whether he’ll run out of energy before she runs out of space.

This, they’ll have to wait out. It’s a matter of her magic against his - Adam believes hers is the strongest, here, but that’s a conclusion drawn through a mixture of logic and wild hope. He could be wrong.

A minute in, Blue says, “I can’t,” and Ronan spits out a mouthful of black and snarls, “Don’t you _fucking_ dare, Sargent,” and Gansey presses himself tighter against her back.

Adam opens his mouth to give instruction, but Gansey’s already reaching his arms around Blue. He clasps both of his hands tightly around hers and Ronan’s, holding them together, and she slumps back against him with relief.

It should be a waiting game, then. But Noah scans the scene, picking out details Adam can’t interpret - or maybe just being an impulsive idiot. “Trust me,” he says, and Adam reads his intention, but not fast enough to stop him from slipping the binding bracelet on and wiggling underneath Ronan’s other arm.

The bracelet protects Noah from any immediate danger of his magic mixing with Ronan’s, should Blue lose her grip. It does _not_ protect Noah from the danger of a stray thread of chaos shredding his internal organs. Adam’s weathering that risk himself, holding onto Ronan’s arm like he is, and he’s irritated that Noah’s doing so unnecessarily. If Noah dies, Adam’s going to kill him.

Noah presses his mouth against Ronan’s ear, murmuring too low for Adam to hear. He suspects the words aren’t important, anyway. What is important is that they make the taut lines of Ronan’s body relax fraction by fraction, a slow unwinding.

When the danger does finally pass, what’s left is this: Ronan sagging against Noah and Blue against Gansey, both too exhausted to hold themselves up. Ronan’s face is a mess of black ooze. Blue’s hair is plastered to her temples with sweat. Gansey doesn’t look like he’s taken a full breath in years.

“You can let go now,” Adam says when he’s sure. It’s a little like feeling the air clear of electricity after a storm.

Gansey drops his hands, which means Blue’s arm falls, too.

“Okay.” Adam addresses this to Noah. He’s amazed that his irritation comes through, like this is just a disagreement over a textbook. “Since you’re touching him, exactly like I told you _not_ to do, how about you take the binding off and tell me if there’s permanent damage.”

Noah slips the bracelet off. There’s a little smear of black on his mouth from where he pressed his lips to Ronan’s ear. “I think he’s okay.”

Ronan squints, transferring his gaze from person to person in their little circle. “I think,” he says, “that went really fucking well.”

-

Later, after Ronan’s washed the gunk away and been given an official all-clear health-wise, Gansey finds him on the roof.

It’s not an alarming scene. Ronan’s just leaning against the sloped slats, having climbed to a higher peak than Blue’s window. Gansey uses said window to access the roof himself, easing past a very asleep Blue twined tightly with a questionably-asleep Adam.

Ronan doesn’t do anything overtly hostile, so Gansey climbs up to sit beside him.

“It’s a start,” Gansey says.

Ronan’s derisive snort speaks volumes. Mainly that he’s uninterested in platitudes and that if Gansey offers them, Gansey’s also going to find himself unceremoniously pushed into the garden below.

“Okay,” Gansey says instead. “What do you want to do?”

“Well, I clearly can’t fucking get rid of it.”

“Not permanently, maybe. But we could experiment - see how long you can go without feeling ill effects from binding magic, find out what works as an intermittent measure.”

“Nah. Fuck that.”

Gansey almost says, _But you looked so - hopeful._ He bites his tongue at the last second.

Ronan’s quiet for long enough that Gansey thinks this must be the end of the conversation. He turns his attention to the landscape, all these spaces Blue has traversed ten thousand times.

“It can’t be something that goes wrong like this,” Ronan says. “Something that can be - weaponized, or whatever the fuck. It can’t be this. So I’m just gonna have to do things the old-fashioned way and figure out how the hell to control it.”

“You sound so thrilled about it.”

“This shitty magic axed my fucking dad. I don’t really feel like playing nice with it.”

 _Maybe that’s the problem,_ Gansey thinks, but he doesn’t say it. He can’t imagine Ronan will appreciate the sentiment.

“Are you planning to go home, then?” he asks.

“Gonna stay here until I get a handle on it. Parrish has no fucking clue what he’s doing. Neither do you. Sargent’s the only one who half-knows what we’re dealing with. So.”

Gansey nods. “I have to go back to the castle soon, but I can keep researching. Let you know if I find anything. And I’ll visit - I already visit as often as I can.”

“I know. You gotta go do your kingly shit. Make sure the land doesn’t fall apart. Responsibility’s a bitch.”

Gansey startles. Shame presses underneath his ribs. “How long have you known?”

“I dunno. Long enough to feel like an idiot for not figuring it out sooner. No one told me, just so you know. I put two and two together.”

“I’m-” Gansey falters. He’s used to knowing what people need from him. If Ronan were angry or hurt or awed, he’d know how to navigate. But Ronan is calm, relaying facts with the placidity of a sunlit lake.

“You’re what?”

“Sorry about the deception.”

“Don’t, man,” Ronan says. “I don’t care. I just-” But he breaks off abruptly, and by the time Gansey’s eyes flick to his face, he’s already smoothed his expression. “It’s whatever.”

“Ronan.”

“I’m not pissed. I’m just kind of fucking done with all the games. You and Parrish both - it’s not for me. All the fucking games. I’m done. That’s all.”

“Can I explain?”

“Nah,” Ronan says. “No offense or anything, but I don’t trust you, so it’d be a waste of time.”

That’s fair. Gansey closes his eyes. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll send along any illuminating research I find.”

“Thanks.”

It’s not angry. It’s not even cold. But it is a dismissal. Gansey hears it even without the way Ronan physically disengages, angling his body away from Gansey’s and stretching out to shut him from the conversation.

He quietly climbs down and reenters the house.

-

Declan rides with the same sleepless frenzy that he did upon learning of Ronan’s arrest.

He’s not fast enough this time.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> things helpfully go to shit

Two sunlit weeks into Ronan’s tenure at Fox Way, Blue frowns and excuses herself from dinner. Ronan doesn’t think much of it - she’s always disappearing to and from the house - but then she reenters with ashen cheeks.

The others around the table notice, too. Tonight's crowd is comprised of Maura, Calla, and Orla, three frequent members of the revolving conglomeration of witches.

Calla snaps, “Spit it out. Should we ready an army?”

Blue shakes her head. “Ronan,” she says.

A sick, icy feeling creeps into his stomach. His expression doesn’t twitch. “What.”

“Gansey’s coming. Full royal bearing.”

No one at the table says, _He shouldn’t be back yet,_ because everyone knows that. Orla stands and says, “I’ll distract him.” It’s probably for the joy of being a nosy nuisance more than anything, but Ronan grudgingly appreciates the sentiment.

Maura says, “Do we need to hide him?”

She’s very calm. The idea that this might be a trip to death-sentence him relaxes Ronan. It’s easier to face than some other possibilities.

“No one’s hiding me,” he says. “I’m gonna go find out what the fuck he wants.”

He’s out the door before anyone can call him back. He’s halfway down the path to the main road before Blue catches up with him. She grabs his wrist, her own hands covered with thin gloves to render the touch harmless. “Ronan.”

From here, he can see the procession moving closer. Gansey on a royal steed in royal robes, cold and remote and nothing like the boy Ronan stupidly fell for. Ronan wonders whether Noah or Parrish is with him. He keeps walking.

“Ronan,” Blue says again. Her voice is edging into irritation rather than pity, now, and she’s stubbornly trotting along beside him despite the way his rapid stride forces her into a half-jog. “I don’t want you to lose control of your magic. Especially in front of a bunch of _witnesses.”_

“Because I give so many fucks about how a bunch of witnesses see me-”

“You _should_ give a few fucks about how they see _chaos magic.”_

Ronan stops walking. “Why.”

“Maybe if you take two seconds to calm down, I’ll tell you.”

It is with great effort that Ronan doesn’t grab her free arm and snarl at her. He holds himself still and says, “I am calm. Why.”

But the conversation is interrupted by Gansey’s approach. He bids the entourage stay where they are and swings off his horse, crossing the stretch of road between them on foot. There’s something in his face, maybe pained, maybe still chewing on their last conversation. Maybe just Ronan seeing what he wants to see.

When Gansey reaches them, out of earshot of the witnesses, he says, “We should do this inside.”

“I _know,”_ Blue says.

“I’m going to kill fucking everyone in a mile radius if you don’t tell me what’s going on right now.” To hell with propriety and closed doors and appearances. Ronan’s just as sick of this court idiocy as he’s always been.

Gansey’s mouth works for a moment, his eyes closing, like he can’t quite reconcile the king and the boy scholar. He takes a deep breath. He says, “We don’t have the full story yet. It appears that a band of individuals tried to raid your family home - the Barns. Believing it to be vacant.”

A rushing, ringing sound pulses through Ronan’s ears.

“And?” he says. Or thinks he does. He can’t actually hear the sound.

“It was not vacant.” A tense pause, a deep breath. “There were casualties.”

“Who?”

“Not-” Gansey hesitates. “Not Opal. Or Matthew.”

“What happened.”

“What do you think happened?”

Ronan shakes Blue’s arm off, turns around, and walks away.

-

As Blue tries to catch up to him, Ronan breaks into a sprint.

There’s absolutely no way to keep pace given the sheer length of his legs. Gansey might be able to keep up, if he weren’t decked out in his regal gear. But since they’re children playing at power, he turns back to the procession and shouts, “Let him go!”

Ah. Because Ronan looks like a fleeing criminal, and an ambitious or nervous archer could easily bring him down. And now Blue is trapped in the position of needing to follow him slowly, to play the wise woman like Gansey’s playing the king, even though everything in her wants to run.

“You,” she snarls under her breath, affecting a stroll back toward the house, “shouldn’t have done it like this.”

Gansey presses the thumb and forefinger of his left hand against his temple. “I didn’t have a lot of choice.”

“You’re the king. _Make_ the choice.” She doesn’t have patience for this line of learned helplessness. “This was a mistake.”

Ronan will vanish from her awareness once he gets outside her limited space, and she won’t be able to follow. His magic is an angry ink blot on her consciousness. But she doesn’t think he’s on the verge of a meltdown. The magic’s been calmer since their little adventure in the field. Less restless.

She has no idea what he expects to do by running away. She’s surprised - and a little pleased - when he barrels his way into the house and _stays_ there rather than racing for the horizon.

“Help me, Blue,” Gansey murmurs. “He hates me. Help me get through to him.”

“Oh, because _I’m_ a diplomat, I’m a great accessory when you _need_ something-” But she’s lost track of what she’s angry about, so she chokes off and curls her hands into fists and walks in stony silence until they reach the porch steps.

She opens the door to find that Orla’s vanished from the kitchen. Her mother and Calla are still there, Maura seated at the table with her mouth drawn, Calla looking poised for battle as she stands behind her.

Ronan’s seated across the table, his voice low and rapid and - _pleading._ Blue registers the discomfort of that before she processes his words. “-won’t cause any trouble, I swear, I fucking swear, I’ll fix anything that goes wrong, I fucking swear. I swear.”

The second Gansey steps over the threshold, Maura composes herself. Her face smooths into a calm countenance that Blue wouldn’t be able to judge false without seeing the distress before.

“We’ll take the girl,” she tells Gansey. “And his brother. They can stay here. Let’s create a plan with that eventuality in mind.”

“I want that to happen.” Gansey closes the door and then crosses to each window in the kitchen, shutting it. The gesture won’t keep a determined magician or spy from eavesdropping, but it makes it clear that he wants privacy from court outsiders.

“Good,” Calla snarls. “You don’t want the women in this house on your bad side, boy.”

Calla has zero idea what’s happening beyond whatever frantic explanation Ronan’s managed to give. Blue appreciates that she’s ready to start a war anyway.

“The situation,” Gansey says, “is complicated.”

“I’ll do anything,” Ronan says.

Blue sits down in the chair beside him. “Gansey could be a hostage,” she suggests. “Until he acquiesces to our demands and has them brought here.”

“I would be immediately amenable to this idea if it would work,” Gansey says, “but it’ll just stoke the fire. People are dead.”

Ronan’s trembling. Blue lays a gloved hand against his arm where it rests on the table.

“Where’s Opal,” he says. Flat. Empty. “You know her name. You must have seen her. Where is she.”

“She’s safe,” Gansey says.

The magic under Ronan’s skin roars to full blaze like flame against dry tinder - sparked not by the promise of safety, Blue thinks, so much as the lack of concrete detail.

The lamp above the table flickers.

“Ronan,” Blue says.

“What,” Ronan says, deathly calm, an oil spill licking over his arms and sliding over the table’s surface, “the fuck - did you do to her?”

-

There are very few things that could make the situation worse right now. An explosive display of vengeful chaos magic is one of them.

Gansey yanks his riding gloves off and shrugs out of his jacket, letting it fall to the floor. He casts the crown down beside it. There’s not much he can do about the royal colors or the finery, but he drops to one knee beside Ronan’s chair, and he begs Ronan to see him for who he is.

“I swear to you she’s safe. I swear it on my life. Adam’s life, Blue’s. Noah’s. I swear it on the _kingdom,_ Ronan, she’s safe. I need you to help me. I’m here because I need you to help me. Please. Please, can you help me?”

Maura’s pushed her chair back, away from the creeping tide of black. The relentless spill of oil slows, then stops, shimmering opalescent on the table.

Ronan’s not looking at Gansey, but he’s not really looking at anything. His eyes are wide with empty animal terror.

“I can’t do this by myself,” Gansey murmurs. “I can’t do it without you. I need you.”

The black oil spill retracts slowly, like a wave pulled back from the shore as the tide goes out. Blue lays her hand against Ronan’s back and rubs it, gentle, as he gasps for breath.

“I need you,” Gansey repeats, low. “I need you. I need a chaos magician who can prove that her magic doesn’t make her dangerous. I need someone who knows anything about _any_ of this. I need you to help me play the game and win so we can bring her here without an angry mob following.”

“What about Matthew.” Ronan’s hands are fists against the tabletop, but the magic has finally pulled back inside him, no longer a corrosive force. If it ever was to begin with - the tabletop appears unmarred.

Gansey doesn’t think that questioning him about Matthew will release any tension in the situation, and besides, Matthew’s an afterthought in the crisis. “We’ll bring him here too.”

“I’ll kill everyone,” Ronan says. This, flat as everything else, is either a cold statement of fact or a threat. “If you hurt either of them. I swear to God I’ll kill everyone.”

“Okay,” Gansey says. “Maybe _don’t_ repeat that in front of anyone else, though.”

Ronan nods, like that settles the matter. His eyes finally focus on Gansey where he’s kneeling, head barely coming to the top of Ronan’s ribcage.

“Okay,” Ronan says, reaching out and laying a hand in Gansey’s hair, gentle rather than threatening. “How many people are dead?”

“Five.”

“You’re positive it was her?”

“It was definitely a chaos magician. Is there anyone who could set her up?”

“I’ll take the fall.”

“No, you will not,” Maura says, at the same time that Blue says, “Don’t be an _idiot.”_

“Witnesses saw it happen. Unless you can somehow prove you were wandering around the rubble-”

“Get Parrish to tamper with their memories, that sounds like his thing-”

“You really don’t care about magical limitations or ethics at all, do you-”

“Wait,” Blue says. “Why were there witnesses?”

Everyone looks at her.

“You live in the middle of nowhere. That’s how you and your dad got away with being unnoticed. There _happened_ to be witnesses? Other people part of the intrusion? You can’t trust those accounts. They were trespassing.”

“Neighbors,” Gansey says.

“The neighbors just _happened_ to show up at the _exact right moment_ to see the incident happen?”

She has a point. The catastrophe is a perfect storm, a political mess and kindled flame of hysteria all rolled into one. Any number of factors could be shifted to create a more manageable disaster. The harmonious meshing of them rings less of unlucky coincidence and more of sabotage.

Ronan’s hand tightens in Gansey’s hair, but Gansey doesn’t think he’s conscious of it. “Take me to see her. Now.”

-

“So you had no idea that Opal was a chaos magician,” Adam says.

Declan Lynch blinks placidly. “None.”

He’s not trying to sell the lie. He’s not playing the same games with truth and deception that Adam’s seen in their previous interactions. He’s aware that Adam will know that he’s lying, and he’s focused his entire consciousness on the lie anyway, creating a thorny barrier even more impossible to penetrate than Ronan’s.

“You had no idea that Opal and Matthew weren’t in the census records.”

“None.” It’s bland, even doleful. The ire and drive are both locked somewhere with all the other truth Adam can’t glimpse.

“You told me about your father, your upbringing, life on the farm, and somehow you didn’t mention either of them once.”

“Must not have thought of any relevant stories,” Declan says. “If you’d asked, I’m _certain_ I would have told you who they are.” And there, at last - the barest sardonic curl to his lip.

After they brought Opal and Matthew in, Adam went to Declan’s townhouse himself. He found the man freshly bathed, clothed, and poised like he hadn’t left for days. Already a lie. Adam followed a snatch of history from a thread on his sleeve, a thread that tugged loose when he dismounted not long ago, and that was when Declan’s walls went up like a battering ram.

Adam isn’t going to rattle Declan. He could, if Declan was selling the lie, but instead Declan’s clinging to it like a bravery mantra in the face of an army’s onslaught.

“Look,” Adam says, “it’s not a good situation.”

“Oh? What isn’t good about it? Enlighten me.”

Adam breathes out quietly through his nose. “I really don’t want to do this. I hate wasting time. Are you going to help me or not?”

“No.”

“All right.” Adam rises from Declan’s pristine kitchen table and heads for the door.

As he turns the knob, Declan says, “I want my brother brought here. Matthew.”

Adam turns back, arches an eyebrow.

“As far as you’ve told me, Matthew’s charged with nothing and in no danger. I want him brought here. I assume the farmhouse is in no fit state for habitation.”

Adam’s breath leaves him in an incredulous little laugh. “Of course. As soon as I’m done questioning him.”

“No. Now.” Declan holds his ground. “Or I’ll make sure my mother’s family knows about the gross injustices and abuses of power happening under the king’s nose.”

Adam laughs again. It’s not cruel, or mocking, or any of the usual flavors he’d reach for. He’s too damn tired to be irritable, and there’s nothing to gain from antagonizing Declan Lynch anyway. Adam can already tell the man would have his hands wrapped around Adam’s throat if he could get away with it. He doesn’t need magic for that. It’s written in every uncontrolled microexpression between Declan’s placid breaths.

“I’m sure it’s hilarious,” Declan says. “That’s fine. I wouldn’t take me seriously either.”

“Ride back to the castle with me,” Adam says. “As soon as I’m done talking to Matthew, you can walk him off the grounds yourself.”

-

It’s a trap.

Declan knows it’s a trap. But to send Parrish away is to leave Opal and Matthew unprotected, and he’s used up all of his favors and extra funds to buy luck. There’s no chance of pulling off some kind of prison escape unless he figures out Parrish’s game and moves to block.

He focuses on his own mental defenses for the ride over. Every bit of energy not funneled into that is on high alert, tracking changes in Parrish’s breathing, his posture, the direction of his gaze. And the changes in the environment around him, because Parrish probably expects Declan to focus on him alone, wants him to so he doesn’t see the ambush coming.

At first, Declan thinks it’s a part of the game, the way Parrish pulls up short when they pass through the gates into the courtyard. There’s no one out here, no suspicious shadows darting through the trees or plastered on the walls.

“Something’s wrong,” Parrish says.

Then he dismounts. There’s still ground to cover between them and the stables, but he starts walking anyway, heedless of his horse. Declan slides down beside him.

“Any particular reason to leave the mounts in the middle of the _fucking courtyard?”_

“A stablehand will get them.” Parrish sounds - distracted. It’s not like him. Declan supposes this might be a machination in a larger psychic scheme, but he can’t imagine what scheme would require the irresponsible abandonment of two perfectly good horses.

“Talk to me,” Declan says. “What are you seeing?”

The sun dips behind a cloud, casting the courtyard and the gardens in a miasma of shadow. Declan’s skin chills against a slight breeze.

“I don’t know what’s wrong yet,” Parrish says. “Sometimes I don’t, at first. It’s a prickling. Takes a second to pinpoint the cause.” He’s walking faster, now, crossing the path and starting up the steps to the castle.

“You don’t think it could have something to do with having a tiny murderous chaos magician here, do you?”

Parrish pauses, a split-second glitch in his stride. It shouldn’t be noticeable, but Declan notices, because he’s watching for it.

“Parrish,” Declan says, “I know you’re not stupid enough to leave my niece to her own devices in the fucking royal residence.”

“No,” Parrish murmurs, “I’m not.”

The doors to the main entryway yawn like a mouth. Declan swallows against his misgiving and steps inside. It doesn’t take his eyes as long to adjust as it should. The day outside is darkening. Storm rolling in.

As he walks into the building, silence wraps around them like a curse. His footsteps echo just as loudly as Parrish’s. But there’s no bustle of people, no hum of conversation in any adjoining rooms, no flicker of life on the stairwell or behind the banisters. It’s a desolate ruin, an abandoned tomb.

Declan registers a rasp. He’s certain it didn’t come from his own chest, but it’s even more impossible that -

And yet, when he turns his head to look, Parrish’s face is ashy underneath his brown, freckled skin. 

He’s afraid.

Or, Declan tells himself, he’s doing a very good job of acting afraid.

The fear catches anyway, contagious. Snags a hook underneath his ribs.

“You know what my dad always said about when things get quiet like this?” Declan says. He says it loudly, so any listening ears will hear. “My dad always said that was the world hiding and holding its breath to avoid the line of fire.”

Parrish stops walking, but his gaze isn’t trained on Declan. It’s unfocused, his pupils wide, hand half-raised as if to brush away an invisible web.

“My dad always said,” Declan adds, “that when everything quiets down at once, that’s the moment right before you see magic.”

“Up the stairs on the left,” Parrish says, his voice distant, like someone relaying battle strategy from the end of a very long, very crowded table. “Fourth door down. It’s a guest suite. Your brother’s asleep inside. Take him and get out of here.”

Declan doesn’t ask about Opal. He has the feeling she’s the epicenter.

He strides to the lower landing’s banister, and the fear snarls tighter around his lungs, and he takes the stairs three at a time.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> uh oh!

It’s been a long time since Adam was this afraid.

Even as he schools his breathing to mitigate the stress response, counts intervals in his head, sorts logic from hysteria, the terror climbs through his throat and mouth like acid.

It’s the - the _emptiness._ There should be threads that he can detangle, follow to the source. He should know exactly what’s happening. A lifetime of study, an existence built on the ability to find fraying threads or misplaced strings in Gansey’s future - there shouldn’t be _anything_ that gets past him, and instead there’s... nothing. He reaches for answers and finds himself staggering through a void, a sensation like miscounting steps and feeling your foot sail through empty space.

It’s not that his psychic sense is gone. That he could weather. It would be an answer, at least. But some pieces of the magical web are fine.

Something’s chewed the magic away.

Chewed away the threads connecting all possibilities, a link of past-present-future, the tapestry he prefers to read rather than manipulate. Ragged chunks have been torn out of it like teeth.

Chaos magic eats the world alive.

As Declan disappears up the stairs, Adam goes to the infirmary.

“Goes” is an appropriate verb because he doesn’t register the time inbetween. He can’t say whether he ran, walked, flew. He knows that he sees no one, and that the web of magic surrounding him remains characterized by impossible holes.

When he reaches the room where Opal is meant to be sleeping, her bed is empty. Covers mussed, like she got up and left. Noah is nowhere to be found. Noah, who was meant to be watching over her, who Adam knows wouldn’t abandon her even if he is a self-proclaimed coward.

Adam has to find her.

The first pair of footsteps he registers sounds like a cannon blast against his hearing ear. He roots through the threads connected to the entity, careless and too fast, shifting possibilities he means to leave undisturbed. He discovers one of the younger healers, barely out of school, thoughts unbothered by the dread choking Adam’s lungs.

It's partly his own perception, then. If other people don’t feel the dread, then it’s his traitorous mind ascribing catastrophe to a normal day.

That doesn’t stop him from tracking the healer to the end of the hallway, grabbing their arm, and demanding the whereabouts of Healer Czerny.

He terrifies the piss out of the poor kid and learns nothing for it. There’s no telling where Noah’s gone.

Adam tucks his body into an alcove where he won’t be seen, closes his eyes, and allows himself thirty seconds to hyperventilate. It’s difficult to shake the image of Opal reaching for Noah, touching his skin, unmaking something fundamental inside him. Ronan’s magic tore animals apart, but for all Adam knows, there aren’t always corpses.

It’s not his psychic sense. It’s either intuition or paranoia. He can’t trust the fear, but back before he knew how to find answers with magic, this was all he could trust.

The thirty indulgent seconds over, he resumes a search for life or answers or more definitive catastrophe. There’s something else piloting him, now, and he knows he’s not paying enough attention when he rounds a corner and slams into Gansey.

Gansey startles, stumbles back. But then his gaze goes sharp. Gansey’s known Adam for a long time. Adam should be calculating the potential danger Gansey’s in and ways to secure the king’s safety and how to protect against an unknown, unquantifiable threat.

But Adam’s not feeling particularly sane or rational. Gansey reaches out a hand to steady him. He must see the animal in Adam’s eyes, because he pulls Adam against him and hugs him tight, his body warm and solid, and Adam realizes he’s shaking.

It’s the first thing that’s felt real since Adam rode through the gates. A little color leeches back into the world. He’s so fucking grateful that he can’t bring himself to pull away, even when he registers Ronan Lynch standing behind Gansey and surveying the scene with his usual brand of icy contempt.

“Adam,” Gansey murmurs, his fingers running through Adam’s hair, his other arm still anchored tight around his waist, “what the _hell_ is going on?”

-

“Opal’s missing,” Adam says.

Gansey holds Adam against him for one, two, three more blessed seconds. It’s a luxury he’s rarely afforded. And Gansey doesn’t much care about impropriety or rumors or the idea that touch should be segregated. But anyone witnessing Adam’s vulnerability would have more ammunition against him than against Gansey, and Adam can’t stand any of the whispers that he’s only gotten to where he is through Gansey’s favor, so Gansey breathes out and releases him and steps back.

“What the fuck do you mean, missing,” Ronan says. There’s no inflection; it’s not a question, really, but demands an answer regardless.

“I mean I can’t _find_ her,” Adam snaps, “and I can’t find Noah.”

Gansey reads the fear in the pause like he’s picked up a smidgen of Adam’s magic. He focuses his attention on Ronan.

“You checked the kitchens yet?” Ronan says. “He probably took her down to get ice cream. She suckers ice cream out of everyone. She’s a demon.”

Gansey appreciates this pragmatic view of the situation. His air of minor disbelief distracts Ronan long enough for Adam to slot his shaky pieces back together. By the time Ronan realizes they’re serious, Adam’s shut away any evidence of his terror and left cool removed logic in its place.

“She’s a fucking eight-year-old child,” Ronan says. “Get a fucking _grip._ You know why you can’t control this? Because you’re a pair of fucking _loons.”_

Ronan didn’t see the scene at the Barns, though. He didn't see the bodies. Gansey would prefer to stop seeing them in his mind’s eye.

“There are unusual gaps in my magic,” Adam says. “Places where information has been... erased. Or torn open.”

That explains how he managed to come so spectacularly undone. Gansey’s seen him panic before, but not for years. Adam spends so much time fortifying his defenses against his terror.

“Opal didn’t fucking chew your magic up and spit it out like a goddamn goat,” Ronan says. “You’re fucking loopy. Help me find her or you’re gonna have an _actual_ chaos problem on your hands.”

“It really wouldn’t hurt not to make threats every time you want to ask for help,” Gansey points out. “I’m usually amenable to helping.”

It’s pointless banter; it advances nothing, offers no solution. But any return to normalcy will help ease Adam’s nerves, and Gansey needs him sharp if they’re going to figure out - whatever’s happening here.

“Let’s say she got up and decided to wander,” Adam says. “Where would she go?”

“Depends. Did you scare the fuck out of her?”

 _“Noah_ was taking care of her,” Adam says. “It’s _Noah.”_

“Then she went to find food, or she went outside. I can’t breathe in this fucking place. She’s got even less patience than I do. She’d make for the old grove.”

So they make for the old grove.

Adam sits down on a wide tree root, exhaling, his shoulders slumping with a release of tension. “It’s better here. The magic. The threads aren’t damaged. Give me a second.”

Adam closes his eyes. Gansey has barely had time to muse on how unbelievably beautiful Adam is when he scries when Adam’s fingers curl against the roots on either side of him. His knuckles whiten.

“Adam?” Gansey presses.

“I fucked up. I fucked up. I fucked up.” Adam doesn't curse, usually. He stands, jerky. “Gansey, go make sure Matthew Lynch is leaving or gone. Then get out. Go to the spot by the river. It’s not safe here.”

“Have I ever mentioned,” Ronan says, “how much I _hate_ vague, ominous proclamations?”

“She’s in the warded room,” Adam says.

It takes a half second. Less. A quarter second. An eighth of a second. A simultaneous conclusion. Ronan takes off across the grounds at a sprint.

“Adam,” Gansey says.

“I’m going. Do what I told you. I’m begging you, Gansey. Do what I told you and get the hell out of this place.”

There’s no time to argue, and no point trying anyway. Adam’s already running.

-

Ronan’s never run so fast in his entire fucking life.

All this time spent pissing around like it’s a fun scavenger hunt for his chaotic menace of a charge - he’d been operating under the assumption that nothing in this castle is more dangerous than Opal. That any headache or destruction she caused would be of her own free will.

Idiot. Idiot. Idiot.

The thing about it is that it’s a recurring nightmare, played slow-motion across his waking life. Opal choking to death on her magic or drowning helpless in a lake or burning at the end of a vindictive torch, and Ronan always a second too late to save her.

He’s dreamed this so many times.

In the dreams, his limbs become weighted like molasses. As he tries to fight through the swamp to reach her, he moves slower and slower, until he’s all but bound as he watches her die. He’s so used to that sequence of events that the speed with which his body moves is surprising. There’s nothing holding him back, here. He’d see if his magic could further increase his speed, but he doesn’t trust his control. Not now, not like this.

The thing about it is that the little orphan girl didn’t find the Barns at random. This was not a happy coincidence of two chaos mages happening to nestle together as two needles in the same haystack. This was two magnetized points dragging together across space. She found the Barns because Ronan was there, because she could feel his magic, because by that point she was half-dead and mostly magic and very little human.

She was younger, then. Three or four. Ronan was younger, too. She was a secret until she wasn’t, but Matthew loved her like he loved everyone, and Aurora was asleep, and Declan was apathetic, and Niall was already dead.

She’s not his daughter, really - he’s not her father. God knows he has no fucking idea how to playact parental responsibility.

But she’s not quite his sister, either. Or if she is, she’s _his,_ not Declan’s and Matthew’s. She’s something to Ronan that she isn’t to anyone else.

The magic killed his father, and it’s going to kill Ronan, and then it’s going to kill her.

A thousand nightmares.

Ronan knows his way around the castle well enough to get to the tower. He shoves people out of his way in the halls, overturns furniture and carts, careens past precarious sharp-edged statues without slowing. His heart might burst in his chest. Whatever’s pushing him, whether human or magic, won’t let him slow until he’s fixed this.

By the time he reaches the spiral staircase up to the tower, his back is soaked with sweat. He can barely hear above the roar of his pulse and the ragged cadence of his breath and the shouting pain of the stitch in his side. He begins climbing the steps four at a time like a mountaineer scaling a cliff face.

On the third landing, something severs all of his strings.

He’s aware of it for a single moment before darkness claims him. But that one moment slows, stretches. His mind is already running a thousand miles a second, and so it examines this with curious, clinical detachment.

 _This is magic,_ he thinks, because it undeniably is. There is no other way to describe being suddenly snipped from the universe. It’s not a dizzy faintness, or a loss of awareness during panic, or a numbness. It’s a collapse from the outside-in. His body doesn’t change. The world around him does.

 _This isn’t Opal,_ he thinks, because it undeniably isn’t. He knows what she can do with her magic, and some of it is reality-bending time-warping mindfuckery shit, but it’s never like this.

 _She’s the bait,_ he thinks, because someone’s been waiting for his ascent - or someone’s ascent - and bracing to deal a magical curse.

But he can’t explore the ramifications of that, because then there’s only oblivion.

-

Gansey follows Adam’s instructions and goes to find Matthew Lynch.

He knows the place Matthew is being housed, an opulent suite usually reserved for diplomats. He’s been very firm about opening the accommodations of the castle to the boy. So he knows where to look, and if he doesn’t find Matthew, he’s going to leave.

Gansey would prefer to be an action player in this drama. But the areas he excels - conversational manipulation, wielding of power, intellectual fascination - don't apply to the situation. Whatever’s happening, he’s more likely to complicate the issue and waste vital resources. Adam will let important things slip through the cracks if he’s worrying about Gansey, and Gansey trusts Adam’s judgment, so he’s going to leave.

He finds Matthew still asleep in the suite, his tousled blonde head visible on the pillows through the gap in the bedroom door. In the sitting room, which he’s just entered, he finds Declan Lynch rifling through all the books on the shelf like one of them contains hidden gold.

“Looking for secret passages?” he asks.

Declan startles and whirls around, apparently having been too engrossed to notice Gansey’s approach. “Your Majesty.”

“I’m supposed to get Matthew off the grounds,” Gansey says, “and then hide. I don’t suppose you’re an assassin?”

“This isn’t me. It’s not Opal?”

“Only partly, if that.” Gansey does not add that she’s in trouble. He doesn’t think it will help. “It might be someone who’s using Opal. Someone who’s playing a longer game than anyone anticipated.”

“It’s Colin Greenmantle.”

“You seem pretty certain.”

“I am. Help me wake Matthew up.”

“What were you doing with the books?”

“Looking for - it doesn’t matter. Fuck it. Help me get him out of here.” Declan shoves the bedroom door open and stomps in, looking for all the world like an irritated older sibling waking an oversleeping child up for chores. “Rise and shine,” he says, shaking Matthew’s shoulder. Then, turning back to Gansey, “Is Opal dead?”

“No,” Gansey says. He’s made his way to the bedroom door, leaning against the frame. “Ronan and Adam are going to get her.”

Declan pales. “Ronan’s here?”

Gansey presses his mouth into a thin line and nods.

Matthew pushes himself up on his elbows, sleepy and bleary-eyed and possibly not conscious. “Whashappn?”

“Get him out of here,” Declan tells Gansey. “I have to go find my other idiot brother.”

“Ronan can-”

“Take care of himself?” Declan laughs, sharp, shoving past Gansey in his haste to get free. “That’s fucking never been true.”

-

It’s not surprising that Adam gets to the tower before Ronan. Ronan may be faster, but Adam’s been memorizing the shape of the castle for years. He knows the shortcuts, hidden paths, places to climb. He cuts through two gardens, an orchard, three outlying wings, and a hole in a wall of ivy to cut a straight path to the area.

He pulls himself up the steps. As he goes, he’s half inside his body and half scrying, like he's flipping through pages of a book and glancing at the text inside. But there are more of those strange missing chunks, gaps and pauses and airless voids, and their existence distracts Adam from the remaining information.

That might be why he doesn’t see it.

He finds one of the two warding rooms closed and locked, with a guard standing in front of it. Adam knows the guy, or at least knows of him. He’s not some infiltrator - he’s an older man who likes to drink and boasts too much but ends up friendly enough to stay on the watch’s good side. He’s average. Mediocre, really.

The guy is not kept on staff for his stellar mental defenses. It takes Adam two seconds to determine without a doubt that he has no ill intention.

“Get,” Adam snarls, “away from the _fucking_ door.”

He must look like a monster, or they’ve all bought a hundred percent into his monstrous reputation, or he needs to hire new staff with actual spine. The guy doesn’t even question him, just unbolts the latch and makes as much space between them as possible.

Adam pushes the door open. He scans the interior to be certain he’s correct, finds Opal huddled in the corner. He steps inside.

He’s braced for the sudden cutoff of his magic. Strangely, the blindness doesn’t overwhelm him. It’s soothing instead. Like pressing a cool washcloth over his eyes during a headache. The gaps in the fabric had been making him ill.

He kneels down in front of Opal and offers his hand. The better part of him wants to lift her and bolt, but he’s wary of getting this particular child on his bad side.

Opal watches him with her black, black eyes. She doesn’t blink. She doesn’t respond. It’s not like she’s in pain - it’s like she’s moved somewhere beyond pain entirely. 

Adam knows that look.

“I’m getting you out of here,” he says. “Take my hand.”

A tiny trickle of black trails over her earlobe, like a raindrop or a parasite or a scream.

She’s not here at all. Adam’s about to take her in his arms and run like his instincts said, and then she whispers, “Trap.”

Adam whirls toward the door just in time to see it slam shut.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> just when it looked like things couldn't get worse

Adam doesn’t panic.

He dissociates in a manner that can’t be explained by magic, but he doesn’t panic. This ability is among the only useful instincts garnered by a childhood of terror. There’s no point berating himself for not seeing the trap, no point losing his mind trying to claw his way out. His intellect is the only weapon he has, especially here, with his magic stripped.

He only becomes powerless if he panics. If he gives up control of his mind.

So he’s not going to. He’s calm as he strides to the door and tries it. Locked, unsurprisingly. There’s no opening through which to see, so he doesn’t know whether the guard is dead or a more skilled traitor than he thought. He tries the window as well. That opens with ease, an impossibly fresh breeze kissing his face. The opening is far too small for him to fit through.

Opal, though -

Adam grimaces slightly as he surveys the too-empty grounds. Then he sits on the bed. He’s not going to dangle Opal above near-certain death unless he fails to come up with a better solution. And he needs to reason through the circumstances that shut him in here, because running blind won’t help anything.

Fact: Whoever did this managed to make Noah disappear and get Opal to the warded room, two accomplishments that belie a certain amount of forethought.

Fact: Ronan being here is either part of their plan or an incredible wrench in the works, and Adam can’t rely on either possibility.

Fact: Opal is dying. 

Fact: Adam doesn’t know how fast. Ronan lasted a while, but Opal’s smaller, and he’s aware that the same magic can affect different people in unique ways.

Fact: Gansey is unprotected, and Adam has no way of scrying to find out whether he’s made it to safety.

Fact: Whoever did this knew how to rattle him thoroughly enough to get him into a warded room, even though Adam makes a point of not exposing his true weaknesses.

Fact: It would have been very easy to kill Adam, and doing so would have given the opposition a distinct advantage. Adam does not believe that people who’d lock a child in a torture chamber are particularly hung up on the ethical implications of murder.

Fact: If Adam’s still alive, it’s because the person behind this wants him to be.

Adam pauses there. He’d make an excellent commodity for anyone seeking information about the kingdom. He has buttons that can be pressed, things that break past the stone exterior. Anyone with eyes knows that he’ll never betray Gansey or the peace they’ve been working on. The list of people who know what buttons to press is much shorter.

 _Hand Parrish a dying child and make him watch,_ he thinks. It’s an effective strategy. An easy one to guess, maybe, for anyone who’s dug deeper than his surface facade. Most actions uninvolved in Gansey’s direct protection relate to the common folk somehow. The downtrodden, miserable, helpless. Kids.

It doesn’t take long to reason through these thoughts. He sorts them the same way he sorts threads when he scries. His eyes trail over the bookshelves - attached firmly to the wall, no help there - the books themselves, the puzzles and toys.

If any of the objects are going to help engineer an escape, he’ll need to be creative. The room’s design is largely Adam’s own, with input from Gansey on the accommodations and input from Blue on the literature and input from Noah on the other objects. 

It’s built on the principle that being treated kindly and having an occupied mind prevents escape during temporary imprisonment. But Adam has been meticulous about choosing amenities that are difficult to fashion into weapons, should less enthusiastic people be kept here.

“Opal,” he says softly. “Could you come over here?”

She hasn’t moved at all during his mental sweep of the room. He doesn’t think she’s blinked. The black drop slides across her jaw, down the side of her neck, a damning image. But after a long moment, she uncurls her limbs and stumbles over like a half-drunk dancer.

Good. That’s good. It means that she’s still processing the world around her, that she’s still capable of fighting.

“Okay,” Adam says. “So we need to get out of here. You feel up to playing a game?”

-

Ronan wakes with a pit in his chest.

He recognizes the feeling from the warded room. An amputated limb, a malfunctioning organ system, an infected bloodstream. Slow decay inside him. They’ve put him back in the prison, whoever the fuck is doing this, left him to rot -

But when he sits up, he smacks his head against a hard ceiling.

This is not encouraging. He slumps against the wall behind him until his ears stop ringing. When he opens his eyes, he’s treated to a vision of a tiny cube. There’s a little wiggle room, but not enough to stretch his legs fully. Dim yellow lamplight filters through slats in one side. It’s like a fucking dog kennel. Might be a literal dog kennel.

To that end, Ronan slams his shoulder against the slatted door in the hopes that human strength will pop the lock. All he gets for his trouble is a bruise, but he tries again, twice more, jamming his elbow hard into the corner.

He can’t get enough leverage. Or the thing is sealed really fucking well.

And he’s cut off from his _fucking magic._

Screaming for help isn’t his style. It won’t do a fucking thing, not if he’s in the hands of the enemy. Anyone in the room outside knows he’s awake based on the rattling and swearing.

Ronan’s not going to fucking beg.

“Is that it? I expected more… drama.”

Ronan is about to angle himself to peer through the slats, but then a pair of eyes appears in his current sight line, rendering the motion unnecessary. With a little neck craning, Ronan gets a full enough picture to tell that it’s a blonde woman. He’s never seen her before in his life.

“You want to tell me what the fuck is going on?”

“What are you planning to do about it?” Her tone is mildly interested, just on the edge of mockery.

That’s fair. Ronan isn’t one for making rational plans or for thinking his way out of situations when he could punch his way out instead. But any information is a solid distraction from the gnawing horror inside him.

“Where’s Opal?”

“Who?” The eyebrows attached to the eyes contract. Then the woman laughs. “Oh, the child. I don’t know. I’m not paying attention to that part.”

“Are you the one doing all this?”

“Depends on who you ask.” It’s infuriatingly difficult to read her. “Things sure are happening, aren’t they? Things that wouldn’t be happening without me. So, yeah, probably.”

“You want to let me in on your, like, grand scheme or whatever the fuck?”

“No,” she says. “I’m not an idiot.”

That’s when the game player who’s an actual idiot enters the scene, as far as Ronan can tell. A door opens, footsteps sound, and the woman straightens up and strolls out of his line of sight.

“Is he awake?”

“You’re interrupting our discussion of epic poetry,” the woman says, but then there’s the tap of her footwear against tile or stone, receding into the distance.

“Pardon my wife,” the newcomer says. He’s standing, so Ronan can’t see anything except the cut of high-class pants and shoes that aren’t meant for outdoor use. “If she made you think this will be pleasant, I mean.”

“No fucking worries on that count, man.”

“I’m Colin Greenmantle,” the guy continues. He says it with relish, like he’s been waiting for the moment for years, like he’s an opulent and tragic hero in a stage play.

“That means literally nothing to me.”

If Colin Greenmantle is perturbed by this, Ronan can’t tell by the unshifting stance of his feet. As if he hasn’t heard Ronan, with equal relish and exhilaration, he says, “I killed your father.”

-

It should be easy for Gansey to escape the grounds with Matthew. Once he’s divested himself of the royal outer layers, what’s left underneath is the basic clothing of a generic nobleman. Gansey knows how to sneak around the grounds thanks to a lifetime of intrepid childhood adventuring, and he knows how to use the least-trafficked passages thanks to a lifetime of social avoidance.

The problem is that Matthew isn’t easy to lead.

It’s not that Matthew is resistant. If anything, he’s a little too trusting, and too unquestioning of the situation they’re in. Gansey can see none of Ronan or Declan in his face. He wouldn’t believe this boy to be their sibling if he hadn’t seen how Declan acts around him.

It’s that Matthew _wanders._ Gansey keeps pacing down corridors, certain of Matthew’s place at his elbow, and then turning around to discover that Matthew has backtracked around a corner in the opposite direction.

“I don’t mean to be rude,” Gansey says, aware that his clipped tone is seethingly rude regardless, “but we’re pressed for time.”

“I think we should go this way,” Matthew replies.

Gansey rubs, delicately, at his temple. He’s aggrieved more than frightened, which is making it difficult to summon a sense of diplomacy. He doesn’t have an instinct for magic. Everything in the environment feels exactly the same to him as it always does, even if he knows something’s amiss.

“I don’t suppose,” he says, “that you’re being pulled into a trap by a psychic puppetmaster?”

Matthew does not appear to notice the sarcasm dripping from his tone. “Nah,” he replies, unconcerned and nearly cheerful, starting off in his appointed direction.

Gansey considers grabbing him and yanking him down the hallway, but Gansey is also a scholar, and curiosity gets the better of him. He follows Matthew, keeping a wary eye peeled for potential danger, as if he’s ever been good at seeing it.

The detour doesn’t take long. Matthew rounds one more corner and stops in front of the second door on the right. “Through here.”

“That is a closet,” Gansey says. “There is no _through.”_ He’s reasonably certain, at least. He and his sister have combed the place looking for every potential hidden passageway, and there’s never been one in the closet.

Matthew opens the door.

A body falls out.

Gansey shouts with surprise, leaping back. His hand automatically goes to his side, reaching for the hilt of a weapon, like he’s ever been any use in combat outside the most performative tournaments.

Then he thinks, _No, God, no._

“Noah,” he says. He thinks, _Noah’s spirit was leading us to him,_ half-superstitious and half-theorizing, and then the body groans, and Gansey’s knees fold with relief.

He drags himself over to Noah and rolls the boy onto his back. Noah’s breathing is heavy but steady, his eyes struggling to focus on Gansey, pupils shrunk into nothing. Drugs, Gansey thinks, or an enchantment.

“Hey, guys,” Noah says, his voice slurred around the edges. “I’m having the weirdest day.”

Matthew says, “Now we can go.”

-

Declan captures the attention of three different staff members - once through a grabbed arm, once through charm, and once through a well-placed name drop. He’s good at guessing what leverage is necessary to prompt people into action, even without psychic intuition.

He comes out of the interactions with a crossbow, ammunition, and directions to the more hidden part of the stables. The plan is either to grab a horse, or to find his brother there, or to find Greenmantle.

As it turns out, he does find Greenmantle. And Ronan. But Ronan’s behind a crated prison on the ground, next to a flat wagon that’s presumably intended for transportation.

Declan raises the crossbow. It’s not his usual model, but the weight settles easily enough against his arm. The arrow points at Greenmantle’s chest.

Greenmantle does not look afraid enough.

“If you think I won’t do it,” Declan starts.

“I’m sure you will.”

“Give me my brother.”

Greenmantle makes a show of considering, as if Declan isn’t a twitch away from shattering his ribcage. “All right,” he says. “I can always use the girl.”

“Over my dead body!” Ronan snarls through the slats.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we fucking get there,” Declan snaps.

Greenmantle also makes a show of slowly lifting a key out of his pocket. Declan’s aim is steady as the man kneels down, fits said key into the tiny cell’s lock, and swings the slatted door open. His body blocks Declan's view of Ronan.

“Get the fuck away from him,” Declan says.

“Wait-” It’s his brother’s rasp from inside. There’s a sharp click, and then an even sharper gasp.

Greenmantle rises gracefully to his feet and steps away from the box. “I’m the only one who can open this enchantment,” he says, offhandedly, and Declan’s going to ask what the fuck he’s talking about, and then Ronan crawls out of the crate and onto the ground.

At first he looks - normal, aside from having been held in a fucking warded coffin. Then Declan glimpses the gleam of silver at his wrists, a delicately etched cuff clamped around each one. There’s no chain, and he’s not sure what they do, and then Ronan retches black sludge all over the floor.

-

Adam knots sheets together, fingers twitching through muscle memory despite the years since he last did this. He knows that the castle's fabrics are threaded intricately enough to hold a great deal of weight, and he knows how to craft a rope that won’t come loose. Regardless, the five story drop makes a cool bead of sweat trickle down the back of his neck.

Opal watches him, still unmoving. Adam glances at her after each knot to be sure that the black hasn’t started leaking out of her eyes or mouth. He may not know how the time frame shifts relative to Ronan, but he knows that by the time Ronan was leaking black goo, he was at death's door.

“I need you to hold on tight to this, okay?” he says when he’s finished twisting together the ropes.

Opal nods.

“Even if your fingers cramp up. Even if you can’t feel your hands.”

She holds her hands out in front of her, experimentally, like she’s moving through water. Her fingers curl into tight little fists and then uncurl. “I already can’t feel them,” she says, a polite informing of fact rather than a complaint.

“Okay,” Adam says. He casts a glance back at the door. If the risks are being caught in the attempt versus letting a child plummet to her death, he’ll take the former any day. So he parcels out an extra five minutes to tie the sheets in a harness around her legs and torso.

Opal remains exceedingly patient throughout the process, but Adam’s not sure that’s born of good behavior so much as fatigue.

The problem with the harness is that it significantly shortens the available rope to work with. She won’t be able to reach the ground. Adam runs the loose length through his hands. Three stories at best, and he’s out of sheet.

“If you’re outside - if you have your magic - can you get down to the ground from the air? If I can’t lower you all the way?”

Opal smiles, just a little, like the question is hilarious. “Yes.”

“All right. If the coast is clear, come unlock the door. If you see _anyone,_ run for the outside.”

Adam double-checks the strength of the knots and ensures he’s used the right ones. He triple-checks. Then he gives Opal a boost to help her into the window.

She has to fold herself into a tight ball to wiggle through, but Adam hears the gasp of relief as she leans into the open air. Her face brightens, like there’s already a flush returning to her cheeks.

They could be noticed by anyone on the grounds, but what actually sets things amiss is the door opening.

Whoever’s behind Adam swears. He can’t pinpoint the voice immediately, and he doesn’t dare break his concentration to turn. If he lets go of the rope, she’ll plummet.

“Opal, it’s time to run,” he calls. He tries to keep his voice steady, and he presses himself against the wall so he can hold the rope out as far as possible; any extra length counts.

Opal shrieks. It’s somewhere between terror and fury, or maybe both.

 _She doesn’t have enough control over the magic,_ Adam thinks.

Hands clamp around his wrists, thumb pressing between the delicate bones, grinding until his fingers involuntarily loosen on the rope.

Opal screams again.

Time freezes.

And then the base of the tower explodes.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> escaping the castle

Adam’s first conscious thought, when he opens his eyes in the rubble of the tower, is, _I’m not dead._ He doesn’t know if this is due to Opal’s precise intentions or luck. Judging by the ringing in his hearing ear and the battered feeling suffused through his entire body, he’ll place his bets on luck.

The tower itself is well and truly fucked, more properly a pile of bricks than a recognizable structure. Adam’s in the middle of the rubble. He has to pull a chunk of ceiling off of his leg, but given that he’s not buried under five stories’ worth of debris, he’ll count his blessings.

His head hurts too much to take in the scene. He touches his fingers to his temple, and they come away wet with blood. _Not a great sign,_ he notes. He casts out, looking for threads to scry, but the pile has become a new pocket of eerie void.

He thinks he knows how the magic in the castle started unraveling.

Opal must have survived the catastrophe. Adam thinks this, stubbornly, and for once refuses to consider all possibilities. He hasn’t seen much of her magic, but Ronan has never been harmed by any of the destruction he’s caused. The magic can’t survive without its wielder. It seems to know that.

With any luck, Opal has bolted for the woods. Escape will be easier with the focus on the calamity. Adam shakes his head to speed his foggy thoughts and ends up dizzy. He needs to get up. He needs to find any survivors. If he could scry, it would be easy - he’d already know who was alive and dead.

The world’s too slow, fuzzy and blurry. Adam suspects his head trauma is worse than it feels. Unfortunate.

Clear-minded, he’d be sharply observing everything around him. There’s surely chaos, cacophony, noise, people screaming, people running to help. The usual. But he’s dazed enough that the first thing he really registers is the touch of a little hand against his head.

The fog immediately clears. Adrenaline, no doubt, sharpening his senses. “I told you to _run,”_ Adam groans, looking up at her.

Opal kneels on a precarious pile of stone - she must have climbed all the way up here like a damn mountain goat - and touches his calf. He hisses slightly. He doesn’t think his leg is ruined, but there’s blood on the cloth of his pants. Possible fracture.

And then the pain goes away.

 _“We_ run,” Opal says.

The situation demands quick action, but Adam needs to double-check the data first. He tugs the leg of his pants up, expecting to wince, and finds a smear of blood surrounding unmarred skin.

“Did you just heal me?”

“I fixed it.”

“Can you heal the survivors?”

“We _run,”_ she says.

But Adam’s mind is racing along disaster-managing paths. The safety and wellbeing of people hasn’t ceased to matter just because it’s the middle of a - he still doesn’t know what this is. He doesn’t think the orchestrator factored this particular timeline into their plans unless they were very comprehensive in their variables.

“Yeah,” Adam says, “we sure are going to, but can you heal the hurt people?”

Opal frowns, not petulant or considering so much as unhappy. “Yes.”

“Okay. Let’s do that, real fast, and then bolt.”

She takes his hand. He’s about to protest that he needs both hands to navigate his way back to solid ground, but then he realizes that she’s guiding him to a safe pathway.

“I don’t want anyone to die,” she says. This, Adam believes wholeheartedly. “Don’t let them hurt me.”

“I won’t,” Adam says, which is how he ends up a trusted guardian of Opal Lynch.

-

Ronan feels himself dying.

It’s the same sensation from when he had the bracelet on his wrist at Fox Way. He’s not feeling particularly kindly toward Greenmantle or the castle structure, though, and he trusts Declan to handle himself, so he tries to claw the cuffs off.

He can’t.

It’s like being held underwater. The blackness floods his mouth, his nose, his eyes. He tries to suck in a breath and retches again, tidal wave, corrosion. Every muscle in his body spasms. The magic screams against his ears, seeking an outlet, begging for relief, but he’s spent enough time around Blue that the power no longer feels threatening. It’s not _trying_ to kill him. It’s just as afraid as he is - it can’t _help_ killing him.

He slumps onto his side, too weak to hold himself up. This will kill him faster than the other bracelet. He knows that. The design oozes malevolence. With Adam’s binding spell, his magic didn’t react until Blue amplified it, until it couldn’t exist underneath his skin without crushing his insides to nothing.

With this binding, the magic is yanked to the surface. Forced to reach for the earth. Shredded again and again by its own lack of connection.

Ronan doesn’t think the violence is a mistake. It’s a feature.

Death will come fast, if he's judging the feeling correctly. Minutes at most, seconds at best. The pain flattens the passing moments, stretches them out, and all Ronan can think is that he’d do anything to make it stop. _Please, please, please._

“Take them off!” Declan barks. Ronan can’t see him, can barely hear him, but it's impossible to misconstrue the panic in his voice.

Ronan sucks in a tiny gasp of air, just enough to remind his lungs how oxygen-starved they are. His fingers curl, cramped shapes against the stone. He pushes himself onto one arm, and there’s pressure against his back, and he cough-retches another slick of black, and he’s shoved down by the firm weight of a boot. His ribs might be cracking. Not that it matters. His organs aren’t doing him much good either way.

“Turn around,” Greenmantle says, “and walk away.”

Ronan considers dragging himself toward Declan, or at least trying to manage speech, but both actions feel like a lost cause.

“You need him,” Declan says, but his voice is thin, and Ronan doesn’t think that’s just because of how his own hearing is currently unreliable.

“I don’t,” Greenmantle replies. The booted pressure against Ronan’s back increases. “He’s just convenient.”

Silence.

Ronan’s eyes are closed, now, or if they’re open, they’re too obscured by black to see. His ears, too, are muffled, his tongue coated with acrid sandpaper. The only thing telling him he’s still conscious is the continued pressure-shredding inside him.

He doesn’t know how the standoff ends. His next awareness is of the sudden ability to breathe, to cough up the sludge and find air where it used to be. His whole body is shaking. He’s so sick, still, that he doesn’t even notice he’s inside the crate until the slatted door closes again. Doesn’t notice his magic is gone entirely until he notices the crate.

“Well,” Greenmantle says, “that was a convenient excuse for a demonstration. Maybe _don’t_ cross me?”

Ronan wants to laugh. He tries, spit and sickness bubbling on his lips, shoving a shaky hand against the door. The cuffs are still on his wrists. They can’t do anything if he’s in a warded area, apparently, his magic already muzzled.

But the second he leaves the crate, the bindings will incapacitate him.

“I can’t fucking,” he starts, and has to catch his breath, “survive in here. You’re killing me either way, man, you’re fucking it up.”

“No,” Greenmantle says pleasantly, “I’m not.”

-

Declan runs.

He has to run. Leaving Ronan in Greenmantle’s hands is intolerable, but letting Ronan die in front of him is worse. And Greenmantle’s web still exists; if Declan shoots the man, the snares will tighten, and everything in Declan’s life will fall apart. Matthew. Opal. The Barns. His townhouse. His mother’s family. Everything he’s ever built.

He has to run. Attacking Greenmantle means the game is over; running means that he can regroup and plan a new approach. If Ronan’s alive, there’s hope. If Ronan’s dead, that hope dies.

This logic spurs him away from Greenmantle and out of the castle. It keeps him from questioning the decision. 

But it doesn’t keep the decision from fucking _sucking._

He takes unconventional paths, picking his way around a definitely-Opal-caused exploded-tower catastrophe and slipping through crumbling stones in the wall. He’s running on adrenaline, planning to plan later, his only priority to escape and get to safety so he can find Matthew.

Instead, he finds Opal and Adam Parrish.

It’s evening by the time he does. He stumbles into the little campsite where they’re sleeping, deep in the woods, ages from any trodden paths. Declan doesn’t know why he’s gone so deep in the first place. The coincidence speaks to intention. Something magic pulled him here, but he doesn’t know if the something was Parrish or Opal or another force entirely.

Parrish is asleep. Opal isn’t. Declan creeps closer, lifting the crossbow strapped to his chest to show Opal that he has it. Silent question.

She shakes her head. “Adam is good,” she says at a normal volume, and Parrish startles into wakefulness.

He’s bleary-eyed, twigs stuck in his hair, clothes more rumpled with dirt and moss than Declan could ever imagine, and his first instinct is to put himself between Opal and the intruder.

Declan is annoyed to find that he appreciates this.

“Fill me in,” Declan says, “on the fall of the throne, or whatever.”

Adam’s mouth twitches, recognition filtering into his tired gaze. “I’m woefully underinformed.”

“Doesn’t sound like you.”

“And yet.”

Opal doesn’t appear to be in mortal danger, so Declan sits down. He tries not to be warmed by the way she immediately clambers into his lap.

Considering that the last time she thought Ronan was hurt, Opal unleashed a miniature apocalypse, Declan is hesitant to speak of his danger now. But Parrish’s psychic senses offer an advantage. Between the two of them, maybe they can form a complete picture.

“Colin Greenmantle’s doing it,” Declan says. “He has Ronan.”

Opal stills against his chest.

“How do you know?” Parrish asks.

“Saw them. Confronted Greenmantle. Tried to get Ronan back. Didn’t work, obviously. He’s got these - cuffs…” Declan mimes a shackle around his wrist to demonstrate. “They hurt Ronan. Bad. I had to let them go.”

Parrish’s face is pale in the darkening evening light. The shadows under his eyes speak of sleepless nights. “Oh.”

“Have you ever seen shit like that before?” When Parrish doesn’t reply, Declan adds, “I won’t fucking tell on you. What, the previous rulers used them? You use them in secret? We’ll both come up with a better plan if we pool our information.”

Parrish says, quietly, “I created them.”

-

For a moment, Adam feels the weight of Declan’s malevolence like a weapon. He’s not sure how to fight back if Declan does attack. His mind automatically scans the surroundings for possible escapes, but he’s still frazzled and sleep-deprived, and there’s not a lot he can do against a crossbow bolt shot at six feet.

Worse is the weight of Opal’s stare. It’s not the eerie magician look or the dead-eyed hollowed-out decaying gaze from the warding room. It’s just the confusion and hurt of a little girl, because she’s following the conversation much better than Adam would like her to.

“Created them... for Ronan?” she whispers.

Adam shakes his head. “No, no, God, no. Failed experiment. I made - a lot of things that shouldn’t - shouldn’t have been used, ever.”

“And Greenmantle just happens to have them.” Declan’s suspicion is fair. Adam can see the calculations: wondering if Greenmantle is in his pocket, if Adam is a traitor, if Gansey and Greenmantle are working together, what the _fuck_ is going on.

“He was my teacher. When I was formally studying magic. I was a good student.”

“Good enough to make a weapon that’s _killing_ my fucking _brother-”_

Opal makes a sound of discontent, and Declan shuts up.

“Yeah,” Adam says, “that good.”

“And now here you are. Spymaster for the king. Since you’re such a fucking genius.”

Familiar shame bites at Adam’s heels. But he swallows it down, because he doesn’t think the situation is actually his fault. Yes, he created the cuffs, and a host of other failed magical bindings, before figuring out what worked. No, he never intended for them to see the light of day. These actions are on Greenmantle for keeping the failures, not on Adam for creating them.

But it’s hard not to understand why Declan is so furious, and Adam can’t dredge up proper defensiveness.

“I’m taking Opal to the witches of Fox Way,” Adam says. “I don’t know how else to protect her. Are you going to come, or go back to your old life?”

Declan’s jaw clenches. Adam knows that he has every reason to walk away from this - his attachment to Opal and Matthew is minimal at best, and Ronan’s a lost cause. But the look in Declan’s eyes says that Adam was stupid to believe there’d ever be another answer to this question.

“Obviously I'm coming,” Declan says.

-

Getting the story out of Noah takes a little doing, mostly because he’s still either spelldrunk or drugged. He has the presence of mind to put one foot in front of the other, and he’s trying hard to be the calming voice of reason, but for once he’s not in the best position to do so.

“She woke up,” Noah says, contemplative, just a little slurred. “She wasn’t supposed to, she should’ve been out for another hour. I talked to her for a bit. We got on okay, I think, and then she - saw something that scared her. I think. I turned around, but I don’t remember if I saw anything. Everything’s fuzzy.”

“She might’ve knocked you out,” Matthew replies, very cheerful about this fact. “She’s done that to me plenty of times. It's harmless.”

“Do you get loopy when you wake up?”

“Not like this,” Matthew says. “Maybe you hit your head.”

“Less harmless,” Gansey observes.

“Sorry,” Noah says. “I’m trying, I swear I’m trying. My magic’s all messed up, everything’s washed out.”

“Do you think that’s permanent? Or a temporary side effect of unconsciousness?” Gansey presses.

“I really,” Noah says, “cannot express” - a breath - “how much I can’t do logic right now.”

Well. They need to get out of the castle anyway, before whatever kingdom-destroying plot this is culminates in Gansey’s death, and Gansey can think of just one place where they’ll be safe. One place that hopefully Adam and Ronan will go, too.

“We need to go to Fox Way.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> preparing for battle

Fox Way has long been a shelter for those without any place to go. Long before Gansey took the throne, when the law was less kind to magicians, it was a place to hide from the law. The wise women are untouchable because of the vital advice they’ve offered to kings like Gansey, and Gansey’s father, and Gansey’s grandfather, and the great-grandfather before that.

The place has not always been populated by the same witches. But it’s always been a protective magical force unto itself.

It’s a natural epicenter for the incoming conflict. Whether the power of the place draws people or the reputation sows mutual non-magical ideas, the result is the same: a king, a handful of magicians and advisers, and a conglomeration of witches all planning to stand against the threat that Colin Greenmantle poses.

The house gets too crammed with bodies and loud chatter for Blue to handle. She exits and walks through the backyard field with Adam, sleeve brushing his.

“Ronan?” she asks.

Adam shakes his head.

She winces, closes her eyes. The pang in her chest feels an awful lot like grief. “Oh.”

“I don’t really think Greenmantle is gonna give him a vacation,” Adam says. “We need to operate like he’s already gone.”

Blue sits down in the field, near where she held Ronan and amplified his magic nearly to death. Adam plops beside her, undignified.

“I liked him,” she says.

Adam nods.

“A lot.”

“I know.”

“I loved him. He's my friend.”

“I know.”

“I’m tired of people leaving and not coming back.” She pries up a handful of grass by the roots. “Don’t go off to fight. Lead the Greenmantles here. I want to give them hell.”

Adam doesn’t point out that Fox Way needs protection. Adam doesn’t point out that Blue can’t exist outside this place, that if Fox Way and its surroundings burn then she’ll burn with them. They’re both well aware of that. Blue’s taken that into consideration when making the statement.

“I will,” he says, “so long as you don’t do anything stupid.”

"When have I ever done anything stupid?"

When they tread back inside, they’re just in time to hear Declan’s tale of why the hell all of this is happening.

-

“Did you ever wonder why your brother is hidden from the kingdom?” Greenmantle asks. Purrs, really. “The girl makes sense, of course, easy to hide a parentless waif, necessary to hide a chaos user. But why keep a non-magician boy off the records? Seems a certain cruelty, doesn’t it? Dooming him to life in the shadows, making it impossible to follow any ambitions, goals, dreams? How will he ever start a family?”

Ronan doesn’t think this is a particularly accurate way of framing Matthew’s situation, since peasants give very few fucks about kingdom-sanctioned documentation. It’s the kind of thing that would chafe at Declan, all his high-and-mighty elbow rubbing. But Matthew isn’t like that. Nothing's stopping Matthew from marrying some neighboring girl and living out his days as a goddamn shepherd.

“Why was your father so firm about never mentioning him to anyone outside the family? Why does your older brother, too, carry on the tradition? I didn’t scry that information. It just seems the most reasonable explanation for why you didn’t forget.”

Ronan’s getting sicker without his magic, the pain aching dully inside him. They’re moving, and he’s still trapped in the crate, and his legs are starting to cramp, and it’s kind of a relief, because he knows that the wards are protecting him from worse.

“Your brother shouldn’t exist,” Greenmantle says. “He exists solely because of me.”

“Alright,” Ronan replies.

“I made a deal with your parents,” the professor continues, “because they wanted another child. Isn’t that a beginning to echo folktales through the ages? They came to me because I was the best. I had a grudge against your father for unrelated reasons. I saw an opportunity, I took it.”

“And killed my father. I got it.”

“Your mother’s life force, your father’s magic. She collapsed right away. He wasted away slow. Did you think he burned out? You can feel what he did right now. Years of inexorable decay.”

Ronan presses his palm against the wall of the prison, spreading his fingers. The metal cuff gleams dully in the light through the slats. All this time, remembering his father growing more ill and more uncontrolled in his magic as the years pressed on him, and that had been - what? A lie? An elaborate untruth, sleight of hand?

“His magic belongs to me now,” Greenmantle says. “I discovered how to remove and enclose it. It’s mine.”

Ronan’s not an expert in magic. He certainly hasn't paid enough attention to Adam's lessons on theory. But he can’t imagine that his father’s power will ever belong to anyone except his father, just like he can’t imagine his own power responding to anything except himself.

“What do you need me for, then?” he rasps. “If you’re such a big fucking chaos magician?”

“I’ve entrapped it. I am still learning to _use_ it.”

Vindictive satisfaction curls the corner of Ronan’s mouth, tightens viciously at the corners of his eyes.

“I am going to make a study,” Greenmantle continues, “with you.”

Ronan doesn’t like the sound of that.

-

Ronan’s right not to like the sound of that.

Greenmantle doesn’t make a habit of getting his hands dirty when he can have other people do the dirty work instead. He’s much like a traditional noble that way, before this generation of kids started fucking around with court priorities. He’s far too important to engage in menial magical labor himself.

But this is a pet project. Has been for a long time. Sure, it’s the culmination of a vengeance plot that’s dogged Greenmantle’s heels for more than twenty years - but it’s also a hobby. Everyone needs a pastime.

His original plan had been to locate and kill Matthew Lynch, once the older brothers had both abandoned the farm. A final nail in the coffin, undoing everything that Aurora and Niall sacrificed for, because their two existing children weren’t enough for them and they didn’t know what price they were paying.

The appearance of new chaos magicians brought with it an infinite number of new possibilities, though.

Greenmantle likes to collect magic. Enchantments, spellwork, bindings, illusions, unusual threads. He doesn’t often get a chance to collect something like _living_ magic, particularly when it’s detached from a person. And he’s proud of that accomplishment.

And he wants to be able to fucking _use_ it.

And even if he can’t figure out how to transfer Niall Lynch’s power from his own wedding band to a usable format, he’s positive that he can use the Lynch kid.

He wants the king to die.

That’s an afterthought in all of this, really. The Lynch family is Greenmantle’s main focus. But Greenmantle doesn’t like the way the kid uses power, or how the people around him do. He doesn’t like that his former star pupil Adam Parrish is capable of making Greenmantle’s life a living hell, and he doesn’t like that Adam Parrish could probably get away with it, because he’s smarter than Greenmantle.

He doesn’t like that Gansey’s sense of justice cannot be bought, and he doesn’t like that Gansey’s sense of lawmaking has so little room for creative interpretation.

So he’s going to harness the Lynch kid’s magic. And then he’s going to kill the king and his court.

Political chaos is more profitable than peace, anyway. As long as Greenmantle sequesters himself far from the violence.

-

The situation is not great for Ronan.

Most of the time, he’s too ill to pay attention to what’s happening. Seconds, minutes, and hours blend into a haze. Too much magic, crushing him - no magic, suffocating him. Greenmantle’s many experimental failures aren’t worth documenting because they all have the same result: Ronan very politely asking death to release him, death telling him to go fuck himself.

Greenmantle experiments with different bindings, layering them up Ronan’s forearms in combinations like he’s trying to crack a formula. Each has the same basic construction, but the pattern of etching and magic is different. The effects are different, too, in subtle ways. Ronan keeps a lookout for moments when his magic is both strong enough and controlled enough to lash out, but for all of Greenmantle’s failures, giving Ronan opportunities isn’t one of them.

Piper is the one to make the worst breakthrough, though she does so with the same detached apathy and sardonic sneer that she does everything else. “You need a usable channel,” she says, sounding an awful lot like Adam at his most haughty and superior. “That pair” - she points to a pair of the bindings - “attracts the magic. Attach them to you with a channel and they’ll work.”

“And if the magic eats me?”

“Then I inherit your fortune,” Piper says, popping some kind of sponge cake into her mouth. “Get going.”

For all of Greenmantle’s supposed grumbling, he follows the advice. Ronan wills his magic to shred a couple of the man’s internal organs. The magic remains outside his control. Foreign to him. A stranger, just as untethered and confused as he is.

At first, nothing seems to happen, beyond the varying awful-feeling things that were already happening. Then Greenmantle flicks his wrist, and the power inside Ronan lashes outside his body. Shatters through a glass vase. Sends powder floating through the air. Retracts with the rest of the room untouched.

Greenmantle tips his head, eyes keen, like he’s assessing whether this was a fluke. Ronan’s magic leaves him more slowly this time, just as involuntary, pooling across the floor like oil despite his best efforts to yank it back.

“That,” Greenmantle says, “will do very nicely.”

Ronan says, “No.”

“It’s poetic, don’t you think? You’d kill them anyway. I’m helping you serve a purpose. You’re welcome.”

Ronan claws at the metal on his arms. He’s done this before, but the situation lends him new ferocity.

He is, as expected, unsuccessful.

“Piper,” Ronan says, laying exhausted on his back after Greenmantle leaves to open a bottle of wine, “you don’t even like him. Help me. Look, I don’t beg a lot. Fucking - _please.”_

Piper typically ignores these proceedings. But this time, she looks up from her book and crosses her legs. “As long as he’s distracted with you,” she says, “I can do whatever the hell I want. Sorry, kid. Life’s a bitch.”

Ronan could not possibly agree with that statement more.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> confrontation

“Greenmantle will know it’s a trap,” Adam says, “and he’ll probably send a lackey to deal with it. But if we’re lucky, he’ll want to play the hero more.”

“‘Hero,’” Blue echoes with a snort.

“He’s very good at strategy,” Gansey offers. “I remember from when I studied with him. He had ways of pitting students against each other that I found very impressive and also very nauseating.”

“And he didn’t like you,” Noah says, “because you saw right through him.”

“I think he didn’t like me because I didn’t have magic and he had to teach me anyway because of my whole, uh, lineage.”

 _“And_ you saw right through him,” Adam murmurs.

“So did you,” Gansey says.

Adam shrugs one shoulder. “Not fast enough. Anyway” - and he is clearly finished discussing his studies under Greenmantle - “we all need to play to our strengths and prepare for contingencies.”

The first big argument in the war council is whether or not Opal gets to stay. Opal wants Opal to stay. Her argument, which is fairly sound, is that she’s already blown up towers and farms and killed a shit ton of people, so she might as well keep being a warrior. Adam says that’s precisely why she needs to sit this one out, which is met with a fit of utter betrayal. She’d expected him to be on her side.

“I’ll take her,” Declan says. “Matthew and I don’t have magic. We’ll stay in town. I can protect the king.”

“No,” says Gansey, “I’m staying here. I know more about magical mechanics than anyone except Blue.”

Blue beams at him.

Adam studies Gansey for a long moment like he’s debating whether an argument is worth it. But his eyes unfocus, and when he shakes himself back to reality, he says, “Actually, yeah, you’ll be helpful. And we’re going to want the Lynch family watching from the outskirts.”

Declan, with Opal nuzzling into his shoulder, compulsively tightens his arm around her. “Why?”

“Because if things go badly wrong…”

“She’s a baby.”

“If things go badly wrong, she can make sure the Greenmantles don’t walk away from this any more than we do.”

Declan grits his teeth.

“Yes,” Opal says, either not fully comprehending the implications or simply reveling in the chaos for which her magic is named. “I can.”

With this hurdle out of the way, the rest is tactical logistics. Adam and Persephone stare into their magic and pluck details and possibilities out of the air, scrawling them across sheets of paper. Maura takes the sheets and deciphers them with Gansey, Gansey jotting tactical notes regarding the magic while Maura notes the geographical strategic advantages surrounding the house.

Blue and Noah retire to the backyard, Noah swamped in her amplification magic to increase the efficacy of his healing. Blue, when she isn’t touching Noah, pulls energy up from her roots and centers herself.

Calla stalks around the grounds laying down protection spells. At one point, Maura asks, sharp, “What source are you using?” and Calla says, “I’ve always wanted to play one of those ‘you’ll have to go through me first’ cards.”

It’s a cozy little home tucked in a rural little swath of land, but the energy thrumming around is that of an apocalypse waiting for the first spark.

-

“They’re coming, I think,” Persephone says mildly.

Adam straightens up and grips the edge of the table. His eyes are unfocused, pinprick pupils in a sea of blue, seeking connections in the same web that she’s scrying, except that he’s searching for different things. Outcomes, surprises, advantages.

“They’re coming,” he confirms, following the threads. “Two people - Colin and Piper themselves - no, three. But no lackeys, no henchmen. Planning to ‘open a negotiation.’ It’s a pretense.” There’s a small pause, and then his tone flattens. “Ah. I see.”

“I wonder what they could have to negotiate with,” Maura mutters, darkly sarcastic and dripping with venom.

Calla stands by the window, watching the road outside the house, jaw set and eyes aflame. “Let’s give them hell.”

The protection spells mean that Greenmantle can’t stride onto the property without gambling his life force. Instead, he stands at the top of the sloping driveway, smiling pleasantly like a salesman ignoring a No Soliciting sign. He has the clothes and face of a peaceable nobleman, and his hands are held out in a pacifying gesture.

With a dramatic flourish, now that he has their attention, he pulls a silk kerchief from his pocket and waves it as a signal to parley.

Maura pushes up her sleeves. “I’ll do it.” With her homespun commoners clothes and the stain on her apron, she’s the best ‘fuck you’ the house can offer.

“No,” Gansey and Adam say simultaneously, and Adam reaches out a hand to deter her.

“Gansey needs to do it,” Adam adds, firm.

Adam is meant to be Gansey’s protector. Gansey, the fallible king, human and unarmored and scholarly and bereft of magic, power in his lineage and a target on his back. Gansey stands from his place at the table and nods. Adam nods back. If Gansey is going to be the brave king of fables, Adam shouldn’t stop him.

And their odds are better with Gansey negotiating.

Adam reaches out and catches Gansey’s fingertips, a soft indulgence, just one of thousands of touches that he’s deprived himself of over the years. Then he settles back in his chair, returns his attention to the astral, and allows Gansey to exit the house.

-

Gansey walks up the long, sloping driveway with his shoulders set and his eyes cold. He remembers being Greenmantle’s pupil, remembers the thrill of academia and the constant search for approval, remembers being a teacher’s pet. Greenmantle is familiar with his scholar self.

He is not so familiar with Gansey the king.

“Richard the Third,” Greenmantle says as Gansey stops just within the protection zone. They face each other, and Greenmantle demonstrates a mocking bow. “How kind of you to meet with me.”

“I’d really rather be doing anything else,” Gansey says, “but you _are_ trying to kill me. It’s taking my attention from better things.”

“Truly, I relate to the plight of wasted time,” Greenmantle replies, and Gansey notes that he hasn’t even put up a pretense of innocence. “I _am_ surprised to see you’ve chosen not to hide behind a diplomat. Or a witch.”

“I’d like to hear your terms myself.”

“How courageous.”

“I don’t find you particularly intimidating, actually,” Gansey says. “You were an egotistic teacher and now you’re an egotistic assassin. It would embarrass me to pretend you’re a threat.” His voice is very steady, and his hands aren’t shaking at all. He’s pleased about this, especially given how his spine is taut and quivering.

Greenmantle’s mouth curls like it can’t decide between irritation and grudging amusement. His next words are precise, chosen to wound. “Do you remember the little projects Parrish used to do to outshine you? _He’d_ be a formidable ruler of this kingdom. I spent a great deal of time scrying possibilities to get him to work for me, but he was far too invested in being your whore.”

Insulting Gansey is fine. It’s much harder for Gansey to tamp down righteous anger over his loved ones, and Greenmantle knows that. Gansey can’t let it unseat him.

“We both know that isn’t why Adam would never work for you,” Gansey says lightly. “It’s sweet that you want to remind me of my student days, but you’re not my mentor, and I’m not your pupil. Consider not _fucking_ with me.” The crass language doesn’t befit typical negotiations, but it feels _really_ good. “Let’s discuss terms.”

“My terms are very simple.” Greenmantle shifts into a rehearsed speech without even twitching at Gansey’s refusal to back down. “You will give me the child mage - as a ward, maybe, should you need to log the deed on paper. You will abdicate the throne, exile yourself, never be seen again, and your life will be spared.”

Gansey laughs. The terms are absurd, and Greenmantle knows it - Gansey is right to laugh. To treat the proposition as the joke it is.

“I have a counteroffer,” Gansey says. “You give me Ronan Lynch and walk away. Submit to arrest. Plead guilty. And _your_ life will be spared.”

“Oh, it’s Ronan Lynch you want?” Greenmantle laughs, too, matching Gansey’s volume, like they’re sharing a joke. “Have at him, then,” he says, and Piper opens the door of their stupidly gilded traveling carriage, and Ronan stumbles into the open.

-

Declan’s breath leaves him in a panted exhale.

He’s never been more useless. No magic to weather possibilities, no political capabilities that aren’t matched by other allies, no healing knowledge, nothing to do but stand here and wait and pray. He’s not even particularly nurturing, so he can’t imagine he’s the best person to be standing here with Matthew and Opal.

But stand here he does. He’s at the edge of the trees lining the side of the house, able to clearly view the encounter while Calla’s magic bends light around him. He and Matthew and Opal are obscured from view. When Ronan appears, Declan’s feet root to the ground, and the horror creeps up his throat, and he loses track of both of his charges.

That means Matthew has to stop Opal from bolting up the driveway. He hooks one arm around her ribs and clamps the other hand over her mouth so she doesn’t scream, which just makes her bite. Matthew winces but doesn’t let go; Declan finds himself surprised anew by the ways his baby brother has changed.

Declan picks Opal up. She kicks, feebly, and then gives up and settles and watches from her new vantage point. Matthew shakes out his bitten hand. Then, his mouth screwing up, he buries his face against Declan’s side so that he doesn’t have to watch Ronan.

Ronan can’t hold himself up. He collapses onto his knees in the dirt, half-tries to push himself up, wobbles and falls. He coughs. Even from this distance, Declan can see the crabbing twists of his fingers as he scrabbles at the dust. He’s lurching worse than drunk, worse than grieving, and the twilight catches against four pairs of cuffs clamped all the way up to the elbow.

Gansey’s composure visibly slips. His hand jerks, his attention diverted, and he steps toward Ronan. Declan hopes against hope that it’s calculated rather than impulse, because the movement will put him outside the house’s protection, which seems like something Greenmantle would want.

Declan never finds out because Ronan throws a hand up, halting Gansey. Words carry over the wind, his brother’s voice raspy and hoarse and not at all like the shithead Declan’s grown so used to.

_”Stay back! Don’t come near me!”_

-

The arrival of the Greenmantles disorients Blue. At first, she puts the intrusive magic down to whatever awful things they’ve done to Ronan. But now she can tell that there are two individual sources of chaos magic before her - one is Ronan, and one is Greenmantle’s wedding ring.

Declan had told them he didn’t know what happened to his father’s magic during the spell to create Matthew, since Matthew clearly doesn’t have it.

Blue thinks she knows.

With every mocking signal and sweeping gesture that Greenmantle makes, the ring draws her attention. Her human eyes wouldn’t even know the ring existed aside from the occasional reflective flash. There’s too much distance. But her magic spreads through the ground and air and woods and streams of this place, and it recognizes the gravitational pull.

If Greenmantle attacks with the full force of that magic, they’re all doomed.

She hates waiting, poised like a runner at the starting line, ready to absorb and redirect and shield, aware that any delay could cost lives. She hates the tension and the chill and the sweat on her upper lip and the fact that Ronan is cringing against the ground, and she can’t do a damn thing.

Ronan cries for Gansey to stay back, and Blue forces herself to study past his pain.

His magic _is_ different.

It’s tucked inside him, but it’s a constantly churning mass of agitation, a discordant symphony. The energy froths and knots and twists and splits and reshapes inside him, his body barely visible around the ocean. It goes from buzzing wasps to slick oiled poison to choking mist to pressurized dams and back, never settling, always hungry.

Blue has never seen it do this.

Even at his most uncontrolled - even melting down in the backyard, seconds away from his own destruction - the magic has always aligned with him. It moves with him, settles in him, works like an extension of his heart.

That’s not what she sees now. Now the magic is the monster she was warned about before she ever met Ronan, and it’s trying to kill him.

The cuffs shine on his arms, a death sentence. Blue isn’t certain that whatever has been done to Ronan’s magic can be undone, but they still need to live long enough to find out.

_Oh, Ronan._

Gansey stops inside the property boundary, turns away from assassin and volatile sorcerer alike, scans the faces in the yard. His eyes stop when they land on her. He tilts his chin, silently seeking input.

She signals _danger_ and _back away_ and _caution,_ in the language they’ve used since they were kids communicating behind her mother’s back.

Gansey edges farther from the boundary line, turning back to Greenmantle.

“My latest work may be of interest to you,” Greenmantle says, and he crosses to Ronan and presses his fingertips against the third cuff on his right forearm.

A battering ram slams against the inflexible wall of Calla’s protection. Blue shudders, feels the vibration in her teeth.

_No, no, no, oh, God._

“What do I need with a dead man’s magic when I have this?” Greenmantle says, casual, and the battering ram slams again - a dozen battering rams, seeking out crumbling weak points in the shield.

Blue knows what Ronan’s magic can do, even without amplifiers. Greenmantle is right. He doesn’t need to know how to harness Niall Lynch’s magic. They’re all doomed regardless.

She pulls at the air around her, yanks power up through the ground, spins a net of threads. They’ll catch the chaos magic and divert it safely toward earth and sky; they won’t mitigate a full onslaught, but they might give the Fox Way residents a chance to survive the first attack.

She throws the net wide, opening her arms - the mental process of crafting magic doesn’t require physical action, but the motion feels more tangible. And then Calla’s spellwork crumbles, and the chaos magic rolls in like an ocean freed from a dam.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> battle

Every window in the house shatters.

The magic enters, a howling hurricane, sweeping down hallways and around banisters and against walls. It hurls documents and vegetables and cookware and books and spellwork and fabric and glass trinkets into the air, the sound of unmaking surrounding them.

The blast has weakened by the time it reaches the kitchen, so it doesn’t level Adam or Persephone or Maura where they stand. Calla slumps in front of the window, alive but injured by the blow to her protection spells. Adam’s physical body feels eddies of power drift around his ankles and probe for exploitable weak spots. But most of his consciousness is outside, scrying through the space between the house and Greenmantle.

If Blue hadn’t dampened the onslaught, they’d all be dead.

The golden threads overlay the scene, delicate strings and braids and patterns connecting people to objects and futures and other people. They beg to be plucked like a musical instrument, or woven like twine.

Though Gansey’s negotiation offers a harmonious advantage, the chaos onslaught turns the tapestry discordant. Gansey doesn’t guarantee their success. Adam has considered the potential of Greenmantle accessing this power, but very few of those futures end well.

Blue falls to her knees.

Adam watches threads of possibility snap.

Noah sprints out the front door and skids across the muddy grass. Blue braces one arm against the ground and wraps the other around his shoulder, her legs wobbling, pulling herself to her feet. The web she spun is an extension of herself - her magic is bruised, her spirit, her soul. Her body can’t weather a second attack; she’ll be crushed into pieces.

Adam rapidly gathers information, seeks solutions, finds bleakness in every direction. Blue could control Ronan’s out-of-control amplified power. But this - this is Ronan’s magic amplified and focused as a weapon, Ronan made into a conduit rather than a magician, Greenmantle far more practiced in using magic for destructive ends.

Grimly, Adam notes that his own bastardized work is very impressive.

Even more grimly, he notes that he should never have trusted Greenmantle’s encouragement and interest. All of this is only possible because Adam shared his work instead of destroying it, because he was a stupid child who wanted to be praised for being important, and now that mistake is going to kill everything he loves.

Adam should have planned more thoroughly for this level of catastrophe. But in some ways, he’s glad he didn’t. Any plan would have involved sending Declan and Opal and Matthew away, and right now, Declan is the best shot they have.

“Come on, Gansey,” Adam mutters.

Maura’s mouth sets. “Does it need to be done?”

“Five minutes,” Adam says, opening his palms on the table, his breathing rough. “Give him five minutes. He can do it.”

“And after five minutes,” Persephone chimes in, “the answer is very much, yes.”

Maura nods.

If Ronan has to die to keep this ‘negotiation’ from becoming a massacre, Maura will do it. She’s the best shot of the women here, aside from Calla, who can't currently wield a long-distance weapon. Calla will be all right, Adam thinks - but she’s been badly wounded by the shredding of her shields.

Declan’s a better shot than Maura.

Adam’s not a big enough bastard to ever ask this of him.

“Come on, Gansey,” Adam mutters again, because there are a lot of things he wants from this day, and Ronan Lynch’s survival is near the top of the list. _Please. Please. Please._

-

Gansey hurls himself through the barrier as he sees the telltale signs of crumbling - crackling static, wavering shimmers, flashes of inexplicable color. He’s just in time. The wave of magic rolls down the hill, an onslaught that would have torn him to pieces, and he straightens up with a gasp and watches from his new position.

Flashes: Blue, crumpling. Noah, slamming the door open. Calla’s silhouette in the window, collapsing like she’s been shot. The windows, shattered. The lamps, extinguished.

There isn’t any more time.

Gansey is vulnerable to Greenmantle, now, and to Ronan, but so is the entire property. He brushes a bit of dirt from his shirt cuff and gives Greenmantle the appraising stare he seems to crave.

“All right,” Gansey says, “I see your point.”

“Good. I always make compelling arguments.”

Piper, perched on the edge of the cart, lets out a derisive snort. She kicks one booted foot up and folds her legs, leaning back with a sneer like a goddess of disdain.

“He’s burning out, though,” Gansey adds, inclining his chin toward Ronan, fiercely proud that his voice doesn’t shake. “Makes me worry the girl will be treated unkindly as your ward.”

“I hardly think that’s your concern.”

“I’d like to look at him,” Gansey says, “to understand what will happen to her.”

“Oh, God,” Piper snaps, “yeah, yeah, little kids shouldn’t suffer, innocent waifs, sad children, can we _please_ get this show on the road?”

“I’m uncomfortable with using a child as a commodity in a political negotiation,” Gansey says. “I feel this is reasonable.”

Greenmantle’s mouth is pursed. “You’re stalling.”

“Let me talk to Ronan. I know he’s dying. I just want to talk to him. Then we’ll talk about the logistics of cooperation.” Gansey lets some of the wildness and exhaustion steal into his face; it’s not exactly difficult.

“Love affairs of the nobility,” Greenmantle says with a disgusted scoff.

“Shake on it?”

Greenmantle knows that there’s little to fear from touching Gansey. He’s experienced firsthand Gansey’s particular magical uselessness, and he’s also keen enough to sense weaponized enchantments. Plus, if Gansey tries anything, Greenmantle can always just use Ronan’s magic to obliterate him.

As Gansey clasps Greenmantle’s hand, an emerald on a ring at his thumb slides sharply against the professor’s skin. Greenmantle jerks back, eyes blazing. “Did you just _poison_ me, you little shit?”

“No, God!” Gansey throws up his own hands in surrender, but speckles of Greenmantle’s blood beam like an accusation. “It’s a family heirloom. Nicks me every week, can’t have it altered.”

He doesn’t wait for Greenmantle’s mollification or permission. He just crosses to Ronan - Ronan, beautiful Ronan, curled into a pained ball in the dust and the grass at the side of the road.

 _Please be enough,_ he thinks.

“Hey,” he tells Ronan, and rubs his hands together, and reaches out, and drags tiny speckles of Greenmantle’s blood over all eight cuffs. Blood of the caster to break enchantments. _Be enough, be enough, be enough._

“You little fucking shit,” Greenmantle says, and Gansey almost laughs, and then Greenmantle drives a knife into Gansey’s back.

-

The storm stills all at once. Howling hurricane to placid lake in the blink of an eye. Metal unclasps and drops from Ronan’s arms, thudding against the ground, and he gasps in his first real breath in ages, and the magic wraps around him like a blanket instead of a blade.

There’s an apology in it, Ronan thinks, as the chaos soothes his burning skin and knits his aching ribs back together. A desperation to heal.

This thing inside him is monstrous, has always been monstrous. But Ronan’s beginning to think that it doesn’t hate him. He knows what the magic is like turned against him, now, and it’s not the same pressure he walks with every day.

He just needs to embrace monstrosity.

Ronan smiles.

He’s about to make Greenmantle experience a few regrets.

Just behind him, Gansey’s breath leaves him in a little “ha-ah,” a startled chuckle, a wheeze from an unexpected boxing blow. Ronan flips onto his back and sits up, and he finds Greenmantle with a hand around Gansey’s arm, and Gansey’s mouth parted in surprise, and the tip of a blade pushing through his chest.

That’s not right.

That’s not how this ends. Ronan _has_ the magic. Ronan can be the monster. Ronan will tear Greenmantle to shreds and kiss Gansey like he should have ages ago and win Adam’s respect and lay on the lawn watching the stars with Blue and wrestle Noah into the muddiest patch of grass possible. That’s the correct ending. That’s Ronan’s birthright, sealed with this curse in his veins - and Gansey has a blade through his chest.

“Ronan,” Gansey mouths, and when Greenmantle releases him, he sinks to a knee.

“Oh, for the love of God, stab him again,” Piper says.

Ronan whips a tendril of smoke toward her, wraps it around her chest, squeezes until her lungs constrict. He lets her suffocate slowly as he turns his attention to Greenmantle. Inky shadows bleed around him, a wall licking up Greenmantle’s legs, wrapping around his arm, prying his fingers one by one from the hilt of the blade. With Gansey and Greenmantle separated, Ronan shoves Greenmantle back and throws up a dam, protecting Gansey from him entirely.

It takes no effort at all. It’s a thousand times more finesse and control than Greenmantle has managed through his stolen displays of power, more finesse and control than Ronan used to think was possible.

It’s good. It’s like scratching an itch. He can feel Piper dying through his magic, struggling against it, fighting it, and that’s good too. It’s all really fucking good.

He’s going to burn this whole world to the ground.

“I’m really sorry,” Gansey says, “for lying.”

His voice is weak and choked with blood, but his tone is that of the scholar sitting with Ronan on a roof, flinging his legs over Ronan’s in the old grove, eagerly reaching for Ronan’s hand in the library. Friendly boy, no king, no encroaching mortality.

“I know why you did it,” Ronan replies. “I’m over it.”

“I meant to do better.” Even this isn’t afraid or desolate, just perplexed, a little lost. “I didn’t even - I didn’t fix anything. What if the next king is worse? The whole world, I-”

Ronan is duly impressed by Gansey’s ability to whisper through the bubbling blood on his lips. He lets Gansey slump against him, carefully strokes Gansey’s hair back from his face.

“I’m about to make the world really fucking great,” Ronan says, and kisses Gansey’s forehead.

-

Blue’s cry of warning is lost in the fray, and she watches the knife burrow home like she’s frozen inside a nightmare.

Noah rips himself away and pelts up the hill toward Gansey. There may be a chance, with Noah’s magic, with Gansey’s vitality, with the chance that internal organs were missed. But before Noah can reach them, a dense wall of shadow ripples up between the yard and the road, separating Ronan and Gansey from the others. There’s no driving through it - even Blue can’t. Ronan’s shut himself away with Gansey and Piper and Greenmantle.

Blue nearly screams - _this is not the time for a breakdown, he needs a healer, get your head out of your ass, Ronan Lynch_ \- but then the moment freezes. There’s a split second, a stretching eternity, between Ronan’s coil and his strike. It’s an instant in which Blue knows exactly what is about to happen like she’s tapped into Adam’s future vision.

“Noah, get down!” she yells.

Noah has trusted in her guidance for years, so listening to the command is instinctual. He hurls himself flat against the chaos-charred grass, burying his face into the dirt and covering his head with his arms.

Ronan’s magic doesn’t batter. Instead, with the precision of an embroidery needle, it shears a neat line through the binding enchantments of Colin Greenmantle’s wedding ring.

A broken enchantment can’t hold Niall Lynch’s magic.

Something explodes.

No - there’s just a sound like an explosion. The boom reverberates through the area, violent enough to rattle the ground, shivering through Blue’s feet as it rocks both her physical and magical awareness. Dust clouds whirl into the empty space. The air pressure changes so abruptly that her ears pop.

Magical debris - enchanted items from the house, plants suffused with magic, Ronan’s tendrils of shadow - they all roll toward the source like they’re being pulled into a gravitational singularity. And then they’re blown outward.

Niall Lynch’s magic is not like other chaos magic. It does not live inside a body. It does not respond to the whims and needs of a host. Rather than dissipating into the air like mist, the magic pours into the world like a cramping animal, exploding joyously through the air.

And then, after that first exhilarated second of freedom, it remembers exactly who and what bound it. It remembers Colin Greenmantle’s curse. It remembers the murder of its host. It pulls back toward Greenmantle’s body, and then it dives underneath his skin, all the destruction becoming one with him like he’s always wanted.

It happens too fast for Greenmantle to recoil. And then the magic eats him from the inside out.

That, too, is fast, faster than the man probably deserves. But it’s long enough for him to scream, and keep screaming, and then the chaos filaments rip through his skin, and then his body is all shadow, and then there is no body at all.

Greenmantle dissolves.

-

In the madness that follows, no one notices Piper Greenmantle.

Except Declan.

The chaos grip on Piper releases, and she collapses to the ground, drawing ragged gasps of air. But as people run toward Gansey, and Ronan flexes his magic further, and the women inside try to determine whether any of Greenmantle’s essence still remains - 

she grabs the broken cuffs, gathered against her chest like a child, and slips out of sight behind the carriage.

Declan has been mostly silent throughout the battle. Opal hasn’t blinked the entire time, so the stifled quiet is for Matthew’s sake, because Matthew won’t uncurl from underneath Declan’s arm to watch.

Ronan’s shields fall as Niall’s magic dissipates. Noah scrambles to his hands and knees and drags himself up the hill. He strokes his fingers over Gansey’s temples, throat, shoulders, the handle of the blade in his back. His lips are moving, murmuring, but Declan can’t hear the words from this distance.

Ronan, beside him, is too sharply defined in the deepening dusk. He’s a smudge etched in a different medium, hard edges separating him from the world.

Blue, stumbling forward and pulling herself up the hill, only has eyes for Gansey.

So no one is watching Piper. Ronan didn’t care enough to see her death through, just like their father, leaving loose ends, and what does anyone care about Greenmantle’s pretty little wife?

Declan opens his mouth to shout a warning.

But the implosion sucks the sound out of his mouth.

It’s a mirror of the first, sound and earthquake and shockwave and gravity and explosion.

Focused on his task, Noah only startles slightly before returning to Gansey’s wound, but his hands move faster. Declan thinks he sees signs of life in the king, consciousness, but that may just be wishful thinking.

Ronan crouches down and presses his fingers against the earth, leaving just enough room for Noah to work with Gansey. There’s nothing human in the posture. There’s nothing human in his face. Even from here, Declan can see that his lips are curled back, teeth bared, snarling like a wild animal.

“God,” announces a cheerful voice, supernaturally amplified enough to carry across the entire battlefield.

Piper Greenmantle strolls back into view, resplendent and beaming and cloaked in an insanely fashionable dress of shadows that she must have conjured from fucking nowhere. 

“I’ve been waiting so _fucking_ long to do that,” she says, and her smile is beatific, and she holds up her matching but undamaged wedding ring.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> conclusion

No.

No. No. No.

“I was watching her,” Adam hisses, slamming his palms down on the kitchen table. “I was watching her! Why didn’t I see her?”

Persephone’s voice is mild. “She must have made the decision a long time ago. Far enough that you didn’t see her choose the possibility.” It’s like they’re sitting in the front garden again, Adam a teenager lost in his own head, her careful hands showing him how to find the roots of plants under the earth. _Don’t rely on books for all your knowledge,_ she’d told him then, and he’d taken the advice to heart, and it still hasn’t saved them. This is not just another teachable moment.

They’re dead. Adam doesn’t say it out loud - he doesn’t need to. He knows it. Persephone knows it. If anyone on the grounds doesn’t know it yet, they will soon.

Adam pushes his chair back and moves to the door. His feet must carry him, but he can’t feel his soles against the ground, can’t make out any sound above the ringing in his hearing ear.

Noah and Ronan, fighting to save Gansey’s life, their efforts meaningless in the face of a demon. Blue, closer to them than Adam, the only one who might be able to reach them in time.

Adam can see what Piper's done in the golden threads, a glimmering tapestry of too-late-nows.

She figured out the binding spell. Not how to bind magic from use, but how to steal someone else’s magic and bind it to her own body.

Colin Greenmantle’s wedding band might have held Niall Lynch’s magic, but Piper’s has the same enchantments and inscriptions and potential to cage. She’s taken the innovation a step further.

Ronan’s four pairs of cuffs served four purposes: to bind, to control, to amplify, to subdue.

Piper has wrested the amplification and the control to her bidding. But unlike her husband, who couldn’t control magic without a living target, she’s done a few quick reconfigurations to the binding band. The spell has grabbed the untethered core of Niall Lynch’s magic and bound it again, following the thread of her invocation from the ring to her body.

All of Niall Lynch’s wild magic lives in her, and she retains the dextrous control of a much more seasoned magician, and the amplification spell means that Blue’s abilities are reflected a hundredfold.

It’s brilliant work. Adam is undoubtedly impressed.

They’re all dead.

“No offense,” Piper says, “but you’re all so _fucking_ dramatic. What happened to blood, guts, and fights that end in twenty seconds?”

Piper’s attention snaps to Blue. _“You._ You’re the one pulling this shielding nonsense, would it _kill_ you to give it a rest? Oh. Yeah, it would.”

She laughs. Then she lashes out.

Blue doesn’t have the strength to stand up against another onslaught like Ronan’s first. Adam races across the grass to reach her, as though he’ll be able to do anything, as though it’ll make a difference.

Piper’s attack is not like Ronan’s.

It’s worse.

It’s not a broken dam. It’s sharper. It’s bladed intention, pointed directly at Blue and shaped with the force of a maelstrom behind. It drives into Blue’s body and the damaged threads of her magic, and Blue’s head tips back as she watches it approach, and Adam can’t see her face from this angle, but all he can think, absurdly, is, _I never got to show her the city._

Blue falls.

She collapses, really. Not like she’s been blown backward, but like the strings inside her have been cut. Her knees fold. She slumps to the ground, and Adam skids to a stop just in time for her head and shoulders to fall into his lap.

Adam looks up. Noah is sprinting down the embankment, Gansey clinging to life just well enough for a break, and it won’t matter, because Adam can feel the lack of life in Blue’s body, and Maura is shouting something, her voice growing louder and clearer as she races out of the house,

and Blue doesn’t move.

-

It turns out that Blue Sargent matters to Ronan.

It turns out that, despite the piss-poor judgment and the murder plot and the crazy and the stupidity, Blue Sargent is Ronan’s friend.

It turns out that Ronan can abide her pain and suffering no more than he can abide Gansey’s.

It turns out that Ronan associates her short and judgmental and abrasive ass with kindness and light and laughter and easy breathing and time spent feeling safe among kin. Feeling home.

It turns out that Blue Sargent is - a sister, or something close, and Ronan watches her collapse, and he sees the truth on Adam’s face, and he sees the crystalline tears streaking Maura’s, and the monster inside him rears up with claws.

Claws the likes of which could protect Matthew or Declan or Opal from an incoming army.

It turns out that Piper Greenmantle may boast amplified power and control and the idle irritability of a god,

but Ronan Lynch’s love is apocalyptic.

-

“Thank God _that’s_ over,” Piper says. “Anyway, this has been great, but I have conquering to do, so.”

Ronan can’t stand against her.

It would be a miracle for all the combined psychics and magicians and healers and scholars in the world to stand against her, let alone this meager and battered group.

Declan doesn’t think Opal can stand against her.

He kneels down, keeping his voice level and audible above the background roar, but still quiet enough to avoid Piper’s attention. “When everything’s done,” he says, “we’re going to stand here hidden until she leaves, and then we’re going to run.”

It’s a miracle that they’re still shielded. Declan thinks it’s because the protection was separated from Calla’s larger wall, but he can’t be sure.

Opal’s tiny fists clench and unclench at her sides. “Is it my turn?” she demands.

“No,” Declan says. “That won’t work here. We’re going to be cowards and run like hell.”

“Ronan,” Matthew whispers.

Declan grips Matthew and Opal’s arms and shakes them. Only barely does he manage not to shout. “I’m saving your lives!”

Because he can’t be the lone survivor of this. If he falls, fine, but God knows he’s been alone for years, and he’s missed Matthew and Ronan so goddamn much, and he feels fiercely protective of Opal in ways he can’t explain, and he can’t lose them. He can’t.

A few tears dribble down Matthew’s cheeks. But Opal is mutinous, a feral growl rising in her throat, and Declan thinks for a hysterical moment how funny it will be if he’s torn apart by an eight-year-old before the battle’s casualties are even counted.

Piper strikes out with another wave of magic. This one is lazier, calculated to wash over the remaining battlefield and drown anything still standing. Burn the conscious fighters to ash.

An impenetrable wall of obsidian materializes out of nowhere and blocks the smoke completely.

“What the hell,” Declan and Piper both start, and then Declan watches Gansey drag himself to his feet and stumble toward Ronan, and then he watches his brother lose his mind.

-

“The thing about magic,” Niall Lynch often told his sons, though only one son was magical enough for it to matter, “is that it’s raw power. Raw might. Nothing individual or human about it. That’s the universe talking to you, lads.”

“The thing about magic,” Adam told Ronan during one of their attempted lessons, when Ronan was pretending not to listen, “is that if you don’t hold onto your mind - if you don’t ground yourself - you’ll get lost and never come back.”

“The thing about magic,” Blue told Ronan as they laid by the trees and watched the clouds in those blessed days before Opal’s arrest, “is that if you forget who you are, the magic’s not gonna help you remember.”

The thing about magic, Ronan thinks, is that you’ll be better at wreaking havoc if you let it take you.

If being a person with thoughts and feelings and hopes and dreams and fears is too much, magic waits to erase every piece of that.

Piper Greenmantle is an insanely powerful sorcerer, but she’s still a sorcerer. She’s still human.

Ronan Lynch surrenders all such constructs.

His body falls to its knees beside Blue, touches her face, but he’s not inside it. He’s observing the scene detached entirely from the meat. He’s the tangible shield of razor stone so solid and thick that none of the other mist can penetrate it. He’s the miasma of shadow spreading throughout the battleground to seek weaknesses and enemies and betrayals. He’s the cold moonlight above and the rustle of char-black branches and the sound waves from a crunching footstep over garden soil turned to tar.

And Blue Sargent’s body must still belong to her like his does to him, because he is this encapsulated bubble of her universe, and he can stretch and twine and measure the exact expanse of her magic, and he can weave himself around the roots like he's threading a new tapestry. Her roots don’t just dig downward, he’s realizing. They sprout from her body and reach for the sky and the trees and the house and every little string that makes this world hers.

Ronan pulls her roots toward him. Or she gives them to him, an offering made with the last dregs of her conscious spirit. He rolls and wraps them up with his own magic. He sucks all the power into a singular vacuum of space, and he exists inside that particle, and he exists outside it, and then he focuses on Piper Greenmantle.

He bears down on her with the full weight of his own chaos and creation and longing, the weight of Blue’s curse and connection and sight. He wraps every single bit of their combined magic around Piper Greenmantle, and he calculates the right weight at every curve of her body, and then he crushes every single bone and internal organ into splattered pulp with the gentle twitch of a pinky finger.

-

Ronan falls.

Adam watches it through time that’s slowed to a crawl. Piper’s death is an anticlimax, an easy win, but it’s only easy because Ronan has done something that Adam would have never, ever, ever asked him to do.

Ronan isn’t inside his body, so his body falls. With the work done, the weaponized magic and miasma dissipate like mist. The connections to Blue’s roots and Ronan’s body are severed, and so there’s nothing to make the magic tangible. Ronan’s soul, outside his body, dissipates with it.

Blue is still and unresponsive against Adam’s legs as he slowly pushes her hair back from her face. Ronan falls across her lap like a parody of drunkenness, all splayed limbs and awkward positioning. Gansey is murmuring, half-sobbing, prayers or spells or curses to accompany his tracery of both their faces, as if he’s ever had magic to make a difference. As if Adam’s actual magic made any real difference.

Noah, healer and carer, the one in the group caught halfway between life and death, cups both Blue and Ronan’s faces with focused intensity.

“She’s still here,” Noah says, low and fierce, the kind of voice he rarely uses but that cannot be doubted.

He kisses her on the mouth.

The seconds pass, interminable. Adam has no fucking idea what Noah is doing, since he never got far enough in the healing disciplines for _kissing back to life,_ but he can feel the intention and the power in the action, and he knows that Noah isn’t just losing his mind.

And then Blue’s eyelashes flutter.

“Mmph,” she mumbles against Noah’s mouth. “Mm. Hey.”

Gansey drags her torso from Adam’s legs to hug her so tight she protests, and the laid-low king cries helplessly into her hair.

-

Opal and Declan and Matthew creep onto the site of the wreckage. Maura makes a quick detour from her daughter to try to intercept Opal, but Opal shoves her away with an irritable shadow and climbs onto Ronan’s back.

“Wake up,” she says in his ear. Then, pounding her small palms flat against his back, “Up! Get up!”

Declan turns around and walks toward the house at a rapid pace. Maura _does_ manage to intercept him, wrestling her arms around him despite his stiffness, and when she coaxes his head down on her shoulder, he starts to cry.

“This all started because of me,” Matthew says.

“No, it didn’t,” Noah replies.

“My parents wanted a baby. That’s what caused this whole mess.”

“I messed around with magical bindings in my classes,” Adam says. “That caused it, too. So did Colin Greenmantle being an evil bastard. Piper Greenmantle playing a long enough game to get past my sight. Ronan being the most self-destructive idiot alive.”

“We can call him back,” Matthew says, stubborn. “Like my parents did for me. We can bring him back.”

Adam’s face is a mask of doubt. “Can that be done?” he asks Noah.

Noah grimaces. “I don’t know. It depends whether his spirit still exists, or if he just... integrated into the world.”

Opal sits up on Ronan’s splayed legs, staring Noah dead in the eyes. “Try.”

Noah swallows, looking from face to face. “Is that what we all want? There might be a cost.”

“Like there was for my mother?” Matthew asks.

“I don’t want any permanent comas happening,” Gansey interjects.

Noah’s mouth is a thin, tense line. “I think we can spread the cost amongst ourselves. Keep it from leveling any one person. Give me your hands.”

Declan pulls himself from Maura and rejoins the group. The vote is, without any debate, unanimous.

-

Ronan opens his eyes.

Ronan has eyes to open.

He thinks, for half a second, that this is death. This is waking up whole and content and surrounded by loved ones, the kind of vision only possible as the mind’s final comfort.

But then he realizes that he’s tasted death, the freedom of untethered bodilessness, and it doesn't contain this warmth, and it certainly doesn’t contain these sensations.

His torso lays across Blue’s and Noah’s legs, his head in Gansey’s lap. Opal has one of his hands, carefully moving every one of his fingers as though to be sure that they retain their range of motion. Declan has his other hand, still, his posture that of a family member at a deathbed. Maura is crouched down, hands on Blue’s shoulders. Matthew lays across Ronan's legs. Calla’s face hovers above Gansey’s as she stands behind him, sickly and exhausted but triumphant. Even Persephone has drifted out to watch the commotion, though she’s set herself apart from the tableau, and Adam too holds himself cool and remote a few feet away.

“Hey,” Ronan says.

This is greeted with a great deal of commotion. Ronan has never before known a single syllable to set off so much hugging and crying and laughter.

When the commotion dies down a little, Blue murmurs, “Huh. That’s weird. Adam?”

Even Adam has partaken in the maudlin affairs, at least a little, touching Ronan’s shoulder and expressing pleasure at his return. He’s sitting crosslegged on the ground now, and his head tilts toward Blue. “Yeah?”

“You still see magic around here, right? You can still use it?”

Adam’s brows draw together. “Yeah. Why?”

“I just don’t... everything’s a little-” Blue waves an uncertain hand, as though she can’t quite find the right descriptor. “Flat? Empty. There’s no... I don’t see your magic.”

Ronan remembers the collaborative ripping-out of her roots when their spirits mingled outside their bodies. Maybe the ends haven’t grown back yet. Maybe they won't.

“Try to walk across the river,” he says.

-

Blue wades into the water.

The river isn’t deep, and it’s not particularly icy, but she’s shivering from anxiety rather than cold. She’s lost count of the number of times that she’s made this journey for a hopeful Adam, only to find her knees folding and her head spinning regardless when she hits the opposite shore. Or even feeling okay at first, desperately fighting off the sense of wrongness, only for the sickness to snare up and choke her later.

Her bare foot touches the mud on the opposite bank. She braces, shifts her weight forward. Balances on her leg. Slowly raises the other leg until it’s outside the water. Places it in front of the muddy one.

Nothing happens.

She takes a step, and then another, and another, and nothing pulls her back, and no emptiness opens inside her, and no strings are cut, and no illness sweeps over her, and she spins around with the world and the stars and a future of infinite possibilities shining in her eyes.

She races back across the river so fast she might as well have flown.

Blue throws her arms around Adam and kisses him on the mouth. Surprised, a little shy, he kisses her back, his grin bright and beaming. She separates herself to kiss Gansey, and then to kiss Noah, and then to kiss each of them again, smeck-smeck-smeck sounds popping in the air.

Gansey’s a little red around the ears and neck. “What the hell,” Adam says, and kisses Gansey too. “I’ve thought about it forever. We almost died.”

“Stupid amount of grief for a crown I’m not sure I should have,” Gansey points out.

“Reform the government!” Blue sings, and then she wraps her arms around Ronan in a bear hug. “Don’t ever almost die again.”

“Next time I get close, I’ll make sure to go all the way,” he reassures her. “I’m done with this half-assed shit.”

Gansey keeps looking at Ronan’s eyes, and then his mouth, and then flicking his gaze away. Blue pulls back to smirk in his direction.

“Aw,” Ronan says, “I was pretty hot, wasn’t I.”

“You were pretty stupid,” Adam replies, but he doesn’t sound angry.

“Well, _I’m_ kissing him,” Noah announces. He has to step up on tiptoes to loop his arms around Ronan’s neck and drag Ronan’s mouth down to his level, but successfully kiss he does. “I’ll kiss anyone here. I don’t give a fuck.”

Adam pecks him on the corner of the mouth. “Thanks for saving the day.”

Noah turns his face and mushes their lips together. “Don’t be a coward.”

“Gross,” Adam observes, a scientific descriptor of a patently unsexy kiss.

“Your _Highness,”_ Noah says with a dramatic little bow. “Would you like a kiss?”

Gansey buries his face in his hands, peeking out from between his fingers. His ears are scarlet.

“Kiss the king,” Ronan says. “What’s life without a little treason?”

“It’s not treason if I say yes,” Gansey mumbles.

Noah pulls Gansey’s hands from his face and lays a chaste peck on his lips. “No criminal record!” he hollers, victorious, and turns a cartwheel in the middle of the lawn.

Gansey, apparently determined to wipe the smirk off Ronan’s face, marches up to him. “You,” he said, “have been an incredible creature since the moment I met you.”

The tops of Ronan’s cheeks go faintly pink.

“And I would be honored to kiss you.”

Ronan obliges in a manner that is not particularly chaste or appropriate for company. It’s a whole affair.

Then Ronan’s sitting in the grass watching the sun set as Blue splashes through the river, spinning in wild circles on the previously forbidden other side.

Adam sits down next to him as Opal climbs into his lap, hugging her arms around his neck.

“You’re not such a bastard,” Ronan says.

Adam leans over and pecks Ronan’s cheek. “You’re not such a shithead.”

Ronan smiles, resting his hand on top of Opal’s head. “You know what this means, don’t you?”

“Mmm?”

“I’m going home,” Ronan says. “I’m going home to the Barns. And Opal’s gonna be fine. And so is Matthew, and Declan, and -”

Adam smiles.

“And I’m taking all of you with me,” Ronan finishes.

Adam lays his hand over Ronan’s where it rests against Opal’s hair. “Good.”


End file.
